UC San Diego Assistant Professors Receive Hellman Faculty Fellows Awards

MAY 13, 2009

By Kim McDonald

Colin Jamora

Emily Troemel

Colin Jamora and Emily Troemel are among 33 assistant professors at UC San Diego who have been named recipients of the 2009-2010 Hellman Faculty Fellows Awards to support their research and creative activities.

The award program was established at UC San Diego through the generosity of Chris and Warren Hellman to provide financial support and encouragement to young faculty and enhance their progress toward tenure.

"Due to the outstanding caliber of the proposals submitted, the selection process was quite a challenge this year," said Paul W. Drake, senior vice chancellor, Academic Affairs. "Forty-two proposals were submitted by Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences faculty, of which 21 were selected for funding. Twelve proposals were selected for funding out of 24 submitted by the Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering Divisions. Given the current economic climate, both selection committees chose to partially fund a number of these proposals in an effort to stretch the funds to assist a greater number of promising young faculty," Drake said.

Recipients of the Physical & Biological Sciences and Engineering awards include Ery Arias-Castro and Jiawang Nie, mathematics; Jennifer Cha and Liangfang Zhang, nanoengineering; Alison Coil, Olga Dudko and Oleg Shpyrko, physics; Joshua Figueroa and Michael Tauber, chemistry and biochemistry; Colin Jamora and Emily Troemel, cell and developmental biology; and Gert Lanckriet, electrical and computer engineering.

Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences awardees were Syed Ali, economics; Ivano Caponigro, linguistics; Robert Castro, theatre and dance; Dennis Childs, Amelia Glaser, Anna Springer and Luis Martin-Cabrera, literature; Nitin Govil and John McMurria, communication; Adria Imada, Sara Kaplan and K. Wayne Yang, ethnic studies; Nancy Kwak and Patrick Patterson, history; Lei Liang, music; April Linton, sociology; Edmund Malesky, IR/PS; Sebastian Saiegh, political science; Clinton Tolley and Christian Wuthrich, philosophy, and Alison Wishard Guerra, education studies.