Four University of Chicago faculty members have earned prestigious Sloan Research Fellowships, awarded to early-career scholars whose achievements and potential mark them as the next scientific leaders.
They include a biologist seeking to understand how the brain makes decisions; a geologist exploring the composition of ancient oceans; a chemist understanding and inventing new catalysts; and a statistician developing tools that could help lead to personalized disease diagnosis.
Given annually since 1955 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the fellowships are awarded in close coordination with the scientific community. Candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists, and fellows are selected by an independent panel of senior scholars on the basis of a candidate’s independent research accomplishments, creativity and potential. Each of this year’s 126 winners, announced Feb. 19, receive a two-year, $70,000 grant to further their innovative research.
Matthew Kaufman, an assistant professor in the Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy, specializes in the neuroscience of decision-making and movement control. His laboratory uses experimental and computational techniques to understand how large numbers of brain cells work together to categorize stimuli and generate precise muscle command signals.
Currently, his group is working to determine how information is transformed as it is passed between different brain areas. Researchers use advanced imaging techniques to record from thousands of brain cells in awake, behaving mice as they make decisions. Kaufman then develops novel analytical techniques that he applies to these data to reveal the computations that these neural circuits perform.
Kaufman joined the UChicago faculty in 2018.