Bioengineer Clifford Brangwynne named 2020 Blavatnik National Awards laureate

Clifford Brangwynne, a biophysical engineer who transformed the way scientists see cell biology, has won the 2020 Blavatnik National Award in Life Sciences.
Clifford Brangwynne, a biophysical engineer who transformed the way scientists see cell biology, has won the 2020 Blavatnik National Award in Life Sciences.
Monica Ponce de Leon, dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University, has been honored as a “Great Immigrant” by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Ponce de Leon, who was born in Venezuela, is among 38 naturalized U.S. citizens from 35 countries of origin who will be celebrated for their contributions to American society.
The C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute has awarded $5.4 million to 26 projects to accelerate artificial intelligence research to mitigate COVID-19 and future pandemics. Princeton faculty members Matthew Desmond, Simon Levin, Stefana Parascho, H. Vincent Poor, Corina Tarnita and Mengdi Wang are among researchers to receive funding for their projects.
Matthew Kunz, an assistant professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University and a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) five-year grant to research magnetic fields throughout the early universe and to establish a summer school on plasma physics aimed at attracting women and underrepresented minorities to the field.
The McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning(link is external) has awarded Hakan Türeci support from Princeton’s 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education, funding the overhaul of a senior-level quantum engineering course.
Three faculty members, M. Zahid Hasan, N. Phuan Ong and Ali Yazdani, in the Princeton University Department of Physics have each been awarded five-year grants by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as part of the Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems (EPiQS) Initiative.
Four Princeton University faculty members have been named recipients of the Graduate Mentoring Awards by the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning and will be honored during the Graduate School’s virtual Hooding ceremony at 4 p.m., Friday, May 29.
Sixteen scholars from across the disciplines have been named Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellows at Princeton. They join 12 fellows who were the first cohort selected to the program last year, with the aim of enhancing diversity in the professoriate.
Andrea Goldsmith, a global leader in the development of wireless systems, has been awarded the Marconi Prize, the highest honor in telecommunications research. She is the first woman ever to win the prize, now in its 45th year.
Princeton faculty members Rubén Gallo, M. Zahid Hasan, Amaney Jamal, Ruby Lee, Margaret Martonosi, Tom Muir, Eve Ostriker, Alexander Smits, Leeat Yariv, James Stone and Muhammad Qasim Zaman have been named members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Visiting faculty member Alondra Nelson also was elected to the academy.
They are among 276 scholars, scientists, artists and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors elected this year in recognition of their contributions to their respective fields.