<p>UCLA Tied for Second in Nation in Number of Sloan Fellowships Awarded</p>
<p>Date: May 19, 2006
Contact: Stuart Wolpert ( <a href="mailto:swolpert@support.ucla.edu">swolpert@support.ucla.edu</a> )
Phone: 310-206-0511 </p>
<p>Six exceptional young scientists at UCLA are among 116 scientists and scholars from 55 colleges and universities to receive a2006 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The fellowships are awarded to "outstanding researchers" in the early stages of their careers, based on their "exceptional promise to contribute to the advancement of knowledge."</p>
<p>UCLA is tied for second in the nation in the number of 2006 Sloan research fellowships awarded to its faculty members, with the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; The University of Wisconsin-Madison was first with seven.</p>
<p>The UCLA scientists selected are:</p>
<p>· James Bisley, assistant professor of neurobiology in UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and member of UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute and Brain Research Institute:</p>
<p>· Mark Arthur Frye, assistant professor of physiological science:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.physci.ucla.edu/research/frye%5B/url%5D">http://www.physci.ucla.edu/research/frye</a></p>
<p>· Thomas Graeber, assistant professor of molecular and medical pharmacology in UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and member of the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging:</p>
<p>· Michael Hitrik, assistant professor of mathematics:</p>
<p>· Heather Maynard, who holds a Howard Reiss Career Development Chair in the department of chemistry and biochemistry, where she is an assistant professor of organic chemistry:</p>
<p>· Jianwei Miao, assistant professor of physics:</p>
<p>Sloan Research Fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of exceptional young scientists and scholars in chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics. Selection procedures for the Sloan Research Fellowships are designed to identify those who show the most outstanding promise of making fundamental contributions to new knowledge.</p>
<p>California's largest university, UCLA enrolls approximately 38,000 students per year and offers degrees from the UCLA College of Letters and Science and 11 professional schools in dozens of varied disciplines. UCLA consistently ranks among the top five universities and colleges nationally in total research-and-development spending, receiving more than $820 million a year in competitively awarded federal and state grants and contracts. For every $1 state taxpayers invest in UCLA, the university generates almost $9 in economic activity, resulting in an annual $6 billion economic impact on the Greater Los Angeles region. The university's health care network treats 450,000 patients per year. UCLA employs more than 27,000 faculty and staff, has more than 350,000 living alumni, and has been home to five Nobel Prize recipients.</p>