Northwestern Now
Young researchers are ‘rising stars driving the research frontier’
Three Northwestern faculty members mathematician Xiumin Du, chemist Julia Kalow and mathematician Ilya Khayutin have each been awarded a prestigious 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The three are included among the 128 outstanding early-career scholars to be recognized for achievements and potential to bring substantial contributions to their scientific fields. Awarded annually, this years’ class draws from a diverse range of 58 institutions across the U.S. and Canada.
Xiumin Du
The two-year $75,000 fellowship is one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to young researchers, and past fellows have gone on to become some of the most decorated experts in their field.
Birch Aquarium to reopen with outdoor exhibits Feb. 27
After almost three months of closure, Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla announced it will open to the public outdoors-only beginning Saturday, Feb. 27. A members-only day is scheduled for Feb. 26.
The aquarium’s outdoor spaces have been enhanced with new animals and activities and will be open to guests with discounted ticket prices. Birch has been closed since early December because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Activities include Preuss Tide Pool Plaza experiences, Kelp Cam viewing on a big screen, an outdoor version of the Oddities exhibit, touch tidepools, shark teeth and specimens and nurseries for baby animals found in local waters.
Five Penn faculty members awarded Sloan Research Fellowships thedp.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thedp.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
But when might a coffee cup not be equivalent to a doughnut?
“Say we have a six-dimensional coffee cup, and we know we can stretch it into a doughnut, but if you’re only allowed to stretch at a constant rate, how long does that take? Manin said. “Can we get a computer to decide whether you can do it?”
In some cases it’s guaranteed that two topologically equivalent objects will easily transform into one another, he said, but in others it’s not possible for even computers to tell whether two are topologically the same. His work examines the transformation in terms of both the geometric complexity (the deformation) and the algorithmic complexity (the computer’s ability to discern equality or lack thereof).
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The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced that 128 early career researchers, including four from the University of California San Diego, have been awarded 2021 Sloan Research Fellowships.
Awarded each year since 1955, Sloan Fellowships honor “extraordinary” researchers in the U.S. and Canada “whose creativity, innovation and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of scientific leaders.”
The new Sloan Research Fellows from UC San Diego are:
Anela Choy, assistant professor of biological oceanography, who studies the structure and function of open ocean and deep-sea food webs.
Brandon Seward, assistant professor of mathematics, who studies combinatorial, geometric and entropic aspects of actions of countable groups, with a focus on the divide between amenable and non-amenable groups.