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4 Receive Sloan Research Fellowships

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Plant biologist and Sloan Fellow Patrick Shih
Patrick Shih, assistant professor in the Department of Plant Biology, is one of four young faculty members to be awarded Sloan Research Fellowships this year. Shih is studying the evolution of photosynthesis. (David Slipher/嘿嘿视频)

Four young faculty members at the University of California, Davis, have been awarded prestigious Sloan Research Fellowships, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced today (Feb. 19). The two-year fellowships are worth $70,000 each.

The recipients are: Rachael Bay, assistant professor of evolution and ecology, and Patrick Shih, assistant professor of plant biology, both in the College of Biological Sciences; and Eduardo da Silva Neto and Inna Vishik, both assistant professors of physics, College of Letters and Science.

Rachael Bay

Rachael Bay mugshot
Bay

She studies how corals adjust to warming ocean temperatures. In previous research, she has identified genes and genetic variants responsible for acclimation and adaptation in reef-building coral species. She鈥檚 also performed transplant studies, in which she moved corals to areas of the reef where they didn鈥檛 grow naturally to see how they鈥檇 react to different water temperatures.

鈥淭here鈥檚 some sort of balance between getting just enough exposure to high temperatures to learn how to deal with them and being repeatedly stressed enough to actually threaten your survival,鈥 Bay said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a complicated balance I think we don鈥檛 really understand yet.鈥

Bay plans to use her Sloan fellowship toward a survey of thermal tolerance in corals across the Pacific. She holds a bachelor鈥檚 degree in marine science from the University of Miami, a Master鈥檚 of Science from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Patrick Shih

Patrick Shih mugshot
Shih

He will probe the origin of photosynthesis by reconstructing the enzymes that ancient microbes used some 2.3 billion years ago. Unfortunately, fossil and geological records aren鈥檛 the best preservers of ancient microbial life. But new techniques can allow Shih and his colleagues to resurrect these ancient photosynthetic enzymes and explore their evolution.

鈥淚f you have the genomes of all these different bacteria, you can start to glean certain hints of how this process unfolded,鈥 Shih said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e very interested in how we can start to do these genome gazing approaches to better understand how this process evolved and maybe even start asking when it evolved.鈥

Shih earned a bachelor鈥檚 degree in microbiology as well as a Bachelor of Arts in political science from UC San Diego and received his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley.

Eduardo da Silva Neto and Inna Vishik

Eduardo da Silva Neto and Inna Vishik mugshots
Da Silva Neto and Vishik

Da Silva Neto and Vishik are condensed matter experimentalists who investigate exotic superconducting materials. Their research also falls under the umbrella of topological materials, an emerging field that is transitioning from theory to experiment.

Superconductors are solids 鈥 usually metals 鈥 that conduct electricity with no resistance. Resistance is what causes electronics like laptops to heat up during use. Vishik focuses on superconductivity created by stacking extremely thin layers of crystalline solids; each layer is just a few atoms thick. Her expertise includes precision measurement techniques such as angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, which measures the motion of electrons in crystalline solids.

Da Silva Neto is searching for topological superconductors for quantum computation. Quantum computers store information in quantum bits, also called qubits. A key challenge for bringing quantum computers into wide use is the hardware 鈥 building computer processors with qubits that maintain their quantum state over time. Topological materials offer a new approach to the qubit challenge, because the quantum state of particles in the materials is protected from surrounding interference.

Da Silva Neto earned his doctorate in physics at Princeton University and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia鈥檚 Quantum Matter Institute before joining the 嘿嘿视频 Department of Physics in 2016. He has a background in filmmaking and is producing a series of videos discussing condensed matter physics.

Vishik holds three degrees from Stanford University: Bachelor of Science in physics, Master鈥檚 of Science in materials science and Ph.D. in applied physics.

Nominated by fellow scientists

Sloan Research Fellowships are open to scholars in chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences, and physics. Candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists and winning fellows are selected by independent panels on the basis of candidates鈥 research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become leaders in their fields.

Forty-four 嘿嘿视频 faculty members have received Sloan Research Fellowships since they were first awarded in 1955.

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Andy Fell, News and Media Relations, 530-752-4533, ahfell@ucdavis.edu

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