Alan T. Waterman Award - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Alan T. Waterman Award is the United States's highest honorary award for scientists no older than 35. It is awarded on a yearly basis by the National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

. In addition to the medal, the awardee receives a grant of $500,000 to be used for advanced scientific research at the institution of their choice.

History of the Award

Congress established the annual award in August 1975 to mark the 25th Anniversary of the National Science Foundation and to honor its first Director, Alan T. Waterman. The annual award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by the National Science Foundation.

Eligibility and nomination process

Candidates must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and must be 35 years of age or younger or not more than 7 years beyond receipt of the Ph.D. degree by December 31 of the year in which they are nominated. Candidates should have demonstrated exceptional individual achievements in scientific or engineering research of sufficient quality to place them at the forefront of their peers. Criteria include originality, innovation, and significant impact on the field. Potential candidates must be nominated and require four letters of reference, but none can be submitted from the nominee’s home institution. Solicitation announcements are sent to universities and colleges, scientific, engineering and other professional societies and organizations, members of the National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

and the National Academy of Engineering

National Academy of Engineering

The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...

Award process and committee composition

Candidates are reviewed by the Alan T. Waterman Award committee, which is made up of 12 members, 8 rotators and 4 members ex officio. The current ex officio members are Ralph Cicerone

Ralph Cicerone

Ralph J. Cicerone is an American atmospheric scientist, a former chancellor of UC Irvine, and currently president of the National Academy of Sciences....

, President of the National Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

, Subra Suresh

Subra Suresh

Subra Suresh is the Director of National Science Foundation and former Dean of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

, Director of the National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

, Steven C. Beering

Steven C. Beering

Steven Claus Beering served as president of Purdue University from 1983 to 2000. Previously, he was dean of the Indiana University School of Medicine for nine years. During his leadership, Purdue's main campus in West Lafayette, Indiana grew by more than 20 buildings. He replaced John W. Hicks and...

, Chairman of the National Science Board

National Science Board

The National Science Board of the United States is composed of 25 members appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate, representing the broad U.S. science and engineering community. The Board establishes the policies of the National Science Foundation within the framework...

, and Charles M. Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering

National Academy of Engineering

. After review of the nominees, the Committee recommends the most outstanding candidate(s) to the Director of the National Science Foundation and the National Science Board

National Science Board

, which then makes the final determination.

List of recipients

2010 :Subhash Khot

Subhash Khot

Subhash Khot is an Associate Professor at New York University. He is best known for his Unique games conjecture.Khot obtained his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 1999. He received his doctorate degree in computer science from Princeton...

2009 :David Charbonneau

David Charbonneau

David Charbonneau is a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University. His research focuses on the development of novel techniques for the detection and characterization of planets orbiting nearby, Sun-like stars...

2008 :Terence Tao

Terence Tao

Terence Chi-Shen Tao FRS is an Australian mathematician working primarily on harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, combinatorics, analytic number theory and representation theory...

2007 :Peidon Yang

2006 :Emmanuel Candes

Emmanuel Candès

Emmanuel Jean Candès is a professor of mathematics and statistics at Stanford University.-Academic biography:Candès earned a B.Sc. from the École Polytechnique in 1993. He did his graduate studies at Stanford, where he earned a Ph.D. in statistics in 1998 under the supervision of David Donoho and...

2005 :Dalton Conley

Dalton Conley

Dalton Clark Conley is an American sociologist. He is University Professor of the Social Sciences and the Chair of the Department of Sociology at New York University...

2004 :Kristi Anseth

Kristi Anseth

Kristi Anseth is a professor of chemical and biological engineering and a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She has pioneered the use of photopolymerization and hydrogels for tissue engineering of cartilage among other tissues.Kristi Anseth grew up in...

2003 :Angelika Amon

Angelika Amon

Angelika Amon, Ph.D. is an Austrian American molecular and cell biologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States...

2002 :Erich Jarvis

Erich Jarvis

Erich Jarvis is an associate professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center. He leads a team of researchers who study the neurobiology of vocal learning, a critical behavioral substrate for spoken language. The animal models he studies include songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds...

2001 :Vahid Tarokh

Vahid Tarokh

Vahid Tarokh is an electrical engineer with contributions to telecommunication, specifically to signal processing for wireless communications.-Life:...

2000 :Jennifer A. Doudna

1999 :Chaitan Khosla

1998 :Christopher C. Cummins

1997 :Eric Allin Cornell

Eric Allin Cornell

Eric Allin Cornell is an American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, was able to synthesize the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995...

1996 :Robert M. Waymouth

1995 :Matthew P.A. Fisher

1994 :Gang Tian

Gang Tian

Tian Gang is a Chinese mathematician and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is known for his contributions to geometric analysis and quantum cohomology, among other fields...

1993 :Deborah L. Penry

1992 :Shrinivas R. Kulkarni

1991 :Herbert Edelsbrunner

Herbert Edelsbrunner

Herbert Edelsbrunner is a computer scientist working in the field of computational geometry, the Arts & Science Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at Duke University, Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria , and the co-founder of Geomagic, Inc...

1990 :Mark E. Davis

1989 :Richard H. Scheller

1988 :Peter Schultz

1987 :Lawrence H. Summers

1986 :Edward Witten

Edward Witten

Edward Witten is an American theoretical physicist with a focus on mathematical physics who is currently a professor of Mathematical Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study....

1985 :Jacqueline Barton

Jacqueline Barton

Jacqueline K. Barton is an American chemist. She is the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology...

1984 :Harvey Friedman

Harvey Friedman

Harvey Friedman is a mathematical logician at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He is noted especially for his work on reverse mathematics, a project intended to derive the axioms of mathematics from the theorems considered to be necessary...

1983 :Corey S. Goodman

1982 :Richard Axel

Richard Axel

Richard Axel is an American neuroscientist whose work on the olfactory system won him and Linda B. Buck, a former post-doctoral scientist in his research group, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004....

1981 :W. Clark Still

1980 :Roy Schwitters

Roy Schwitters

Roy F. Schwitters is a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin. He was formerly a professor of physics at Harvard and Stanford. His undergraduate and doctoral degrees are both from MIT....

1979 :William Thurston

William Thurston

William Paul Thurston is an American mathematician. He is a pioneer in the field of low-dimensional topology. In 1982, he was awarded the Fields Medal for his contributions to the study of 3-manifolds...

1978 :Richard A. Muller

Richard A. Muller

Richard A. Muller is a noted American professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.-Career:...

1977 :J. William Schopf

1976 :Charles Fefferman

Charles Fefferman

Charles Louis Fefferman is an American mathematician at Princeton University. His primary field of research is mathematical analysis....

External links

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