Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » Fellowships, Scholarships

11 Science Journalist Fellows at MIT

curiouscat — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:38:19 +0000

The Knight Fellowship at MIT has a class of eleven science journalists from six countries this year. All are mid-career journalists who work for general interest news media to improve the public understanding of science. They will take a sabbatical year from their jobs to improve their knowledge by taking courses at MIT and Harvard, interviewing scientists and attending various seminars and lectures during the 2008–2009 academic year. They take up residence in Cambridge in August 2008.

The fellows include: Kimani Chege, editor of TechNews Africa, from Kenya; Sabin Russell, medical writer at The San Francisco Chronicle, from the USA; Teresa Firmino, science and technology reporter for Público, from Portugal; Jonathan Fildes, science and technology reporter for BBC News, from England; and Rachel Zimmerman, health and medicine reporter for The Wall Street Journal, from the USA.

This is a great program to help some excellent science journalist to get even better. We need more excellent science journalism.

We list the Knight Science Journalism Tracker on the list of our favorite science and engineering blogs.

NSF Graduate Research Fellows 2008

curiouscat — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:02:05 +0000

The National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program aims to ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and to reinforce its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in the relevant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.

This year NSF awarded 913 fellowships: which come with a stipend of $30,000 and $10,500 cost of education allowance. On the ASEE Science and Engineering Fellowship blog, that I manage in my full time job with the American Society for Engineering Education (the Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog is my own and not related to ASEE), we highlight awardees including: Sarah Lukes mechanical engineering graduate working on her PhD at Montana State University; Ben Safdi, engineering physics and applied mathematics dual major at Colorado University - Boulder; Henry Deyoung, computer science major at Carnegie Mellon University, Jennifer Robinson, computer science major at North Carolina State; Lydia Thé, biology major at Swarthmore; and Julia Kamenetzky, physics major at Cornell College.

Fellows from previous years include: Sergey Brin, H. David Politzer and Eric Maskin.

Denzel Washington Marketing Science

curiouscat — Sat, 03 May 2008 20:16:38 +0000

Denzel Washington stressed the importance of illustrating to children that scientists are more important than entertainers.

Pauletta and Denzel Washington will presented two research scholarships at Mount Vernon High School in Denzel’s hometown of Mount Vernon, New York. The Pauletta and Denzel Washington Family Scholar in Neuroscience Awards have been given annually since 2004 by the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The program provides $2,500 in monthly support for a graduate-level researcher and $2,000 per month for an undergraduate. Recipients work during the summer months under the direction of renowned physicians, neurosurgeons and scientists, and prepare a scientific abstract or paper to submit to a national neuroscience, cancer or neurosurgery organization.

In addition to lending their name to the scholarships, the Washingtons take an active role in the program, meeting with applicants and announcing the annual awards. The scholarships are awarded in a different city each year to increase awareness of neuroscience research and encourage students from many geographic locations to apply. The Washingtons said they hope the Mount Vernon setting will persuade students from Denzel’s hometown to consider careers in the sciences because they offer the potential to change the world.

Yes I do see the irony of including a post on a celebrity saying we need to focus more on scientists and less on entertainers.

Team America Rocketry Challenge

curiouscat — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:15:01 +0000

On May 17th, in The Plains, Virginia, the Team America Rocketry Challenge finals will be held. After a full day of launches, held at the Great Meadows facility, the winners will be crowned and $60,000 in scholarships will be divided up among the top finishers.

HMMI Nurtures Nation’s Best Early Career Scientists

curiouscat — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:14:13 +0000

New HHMI Program Aims to Nurture Nation’s Best Early Career Scientists

HHMI will invest more than $300 million in this first group of scientists and plans a second competition in 2011.
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HHMI is focusing on researchers who have led independent laboratories for two to six years at one of the approximately 200 U.S. medical schools, universities, and research institutes that are eligible. Those who are selected by HHMI will receive six-year, non-renewable appointments including full salary and research support while remaining affiliated with their home institution.
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HHMI is seeking scientists from a wide variety of fields, including all areas of basic biological and biomedical research, and areas of chemistry, physics, computer science and engineering that are directly related to biology or medicine.
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Scientists who wish to be considered for this competition must indicate their intention to submit an application by April 30, 2008. The deadline for completed applications is June 10, 2008. Panels of distinguished biomedical researchers will evaluate the candidates’ applications. Final selections are expected to be made by February 2009.

HMMI is an incredible source of funding for science.

Google India Women in Engineering Award 2008

curiouscat — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:33:01 +0000

Google India Women in Engineering Award 2008

The award is open to full time woman students at recognized institutions majoring computer engineering or related fields in their 2nd to final years of a bachelor’s program and all students from a master’s or PhD program. Student must have a cumulative of at least 4.0 on a 5.0 scale, 8.0 on a 10.0 scale, or equivalent. The application deadline is January 31st. Apply online for this new award.

Smart Young Minds - Summer Jobs

curiouscat — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:45:53 +0000

At Janelia Farm (located in Northern Virginia and part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) each undergraduate research scholar will spend his or her summer conducting research under the guidance and direction of a Janelia Farm lab head. The undergraduate research scholars program will run from June 9-August 15, 2008. On-campus housing will be provided to undergraduate research scholars. Each scholar will also receive a $4,500 stipend and reimbursement for travel to and from Janelia Farm. Apply. Article on the first year of the program - 2007.

Jeanelia Farm also offers research campus fellows - We invite applications for fellows from biologists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, neurobiologists and physicists who are passionate in their pursuit of important problems in basic scientific and technical research. JFRC Fellows are independent scientists, with labs of up to two additional members. Appointments are for a term of five years. We welcome applications from individuals at all career stages, as well as coordinated applications from groups of individuals.

We invite applications for group leader positions from biologists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, neurobiologists and physicists who are passionate in their pursuit of important problems in basic scientific and technical research. JFRC group leaders will be independent scientists, similar to the HHMI investigators based at universities and independent research institutes, with labs of up to six additional members and an initial appointment of six years. We welcome applications from individuals at all career stages, as well as coordinated applications from groups of individuals.

Packard Faculty Fellowship for Nathaniel Dominy

curiouscat — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:09:46 +0000

UC Santa Cruz anthropologist Nathaniel Dominy wins prestigious $625,000 Packard Fellowship

Dominy will receive $125,000 per year for the next five years to support his investigation of the diet and foraging behaviors of hominins, the early human ancestors who lived 2 million years ago. The Packard Foundation awards these fellowships to young scientists and engineers who show exceptional promise and creativity.
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Dominy’s research interests center around the acquisition and consumption of food, which he believes fueled the development of bipedalism and big brains. Two of his recent studies made headlines around the world in recent months: The first added compelling new evidence to the hypothesis that hominins may have eaten starchy, nutrient-rich underground plant structures, including bulbs and tubers, while the second revealed that humans are uniquely equipped to digest starch. The revelation that humans have many more copies of the salivary amylase gene than any of their ape relatives bolsters the idea that starch was a crucial addition to the diet of early humans, and that natural selection favored individuals who could make more starch-digesting protein.

Proposal to Triple NSF GFRP Awards and the Size of the Awards by 33%

curiouscat — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:16:21 +0000

Hillary Clinton’s Innovation Agenda (press release from the campaign):

Triple the number of NSF fellowships and increase the size of each award by 33 percent. At present, the NSF offers approximately 1,000 fellowships per year. This number is not much changed from the 1960s, although the number of college students graduating with science and engineering degrees has grown three fold. The NSF fellowship is the key financial resource for science and engineering graduate students. Hillary will increase the number of fellowships to 3,000 per year. She will also increase each award from $30,000 to $40,000 per year (simultaneously, she will increase the NSF award to each recipient’s school from $10,500 per recipient to $14,000 per recipient to help cover educational costs).

That sounds great to me. I have talked about this before: Increasing American Fellowship Support for Scientists and Engineers. I work for ASEE on the IT systems in support of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Operation Center (the ASEE portion of the program) and other engineering fellowship programs). This blog is my own and is not affiliated with ASEE.

The proposed legislation on Graduate Scholar Awards in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math also has a similar aim and commitment. Here is a post from 2005 on similar proposals. As I mentioned in The Innovation Agenda, 2005 while I agree with this spending I also believe what I said then:

Currently the United States has over $8,000,000,000,000 (that is over $8 trillion - see current count) in debt (increasing by over $400 Billion a year). That brings every person’s share to over $27,000. Given that, it seems reckless to just add spending without either cutting something else or increasing taxes and I don’t see those details in the innovation agenda.

The debt now? Over $9,000,000,000,000 (increasing more than $1.4 billion a day for the last year). More on Washington taxing future generations to pay for what we spend today.

Science and Engineering Fellowship Applications Open Now

curiouscat — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:49:33 +0000

Some of the science and engineering fellowship applications that are currently open: