Marissa Weichman,an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry,has been awarded a2023 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation for her proposal to study atmospheric aerosols and their potential role in climate change.Weichman is one of 20 scientists nationwide to receive the prestigious,early-career fellowship,among the nation’s largest nongovernmental awards.Designed to allow maximum flexibility in the use of award funds,the Foundation allots$875,000 over five years to each fellow to spend on research as they wish.Fellowships are awarded to encourage innovative,blue-sky thinking that could one day foster discoveries to improve lives and broaden our understanding of the universe.Weichman,a physical chemist,was selected for her proposal“The Stratosphere in Focus:New Spectroscopic Tools for Aerosol Science.”“I’m especially thrilled with this fellowship to get to join the community that comes with being aPackard Fellow—all people who are doing such exciting things in their fields across scientific boundaries,”said Weichman.“I’m excited to meet my cohort of fellows on the tenure track,so it really is about finding peers and forming those bonds that are so inspiring.“The Foundation gives you the startup money without restrictions,recognizing that maybe you’ll have other great ideas or there’s something else that you think of tomorrow that you might want to do,”Weichman added.“So for the next five years,that flexibility allows me to go for bigger,riskier ideas that can have greater impact.”Paul Chirik,Princeton’s Edwards S.Sanford Professor of Chemistry and the chair of the department,said:“This highly competitive award speaks to what we all know at Princeton:that Marissa is asuperb scientist,teacher and colleague.Just afew years into her independent career,she has developed an impactful and visible program on light-matter interactions.As aformer Packard fellow,I know these awards allow for the freedom to explore new,high-risk,high-reward ideas outside the realm of traditional funding streams.I have no doubt Marissa will make the most of this opportunity.”Weichman plans to use spectroscopic techniques to investigate uncertainties around the role of aerosols in the atmosphere and their involvement in climate change.Aerosols are ubiquitous,micro-sized particles suspended in the air—such as water droplets,dust and soot—that influence two phenomena central to the Earth’s climate and weather:the scattering of sunlight and the seeding of clouds.These roles,however,are poorly understood.Weichman will look at how aparticle’s size and composition influences its chemistry,the scattering and absorption of light,and its ability to seed cloud droplets.“Aerosol-light and aerosol-cloud interactions remain the largest sources of uncertainty in our best models of Earth’s radiative balance.Our current knowledge of these intricate systems is not sufficient to capture their role in the climate crisis,much less predict the impact of potential climate interventions,”said Weichman.“All of these complicated interactions depend on the size of the particle and its composition.If you’re measuring how these particles behave and averaging over millions of particles of various sizes and compositions,you’ll never be able to understand what’s actually happening.“So instead,we’re going to look at asingle particle.Let’s hold one single salt particle or dust particle,trap it with electromagnetic fields and hold it in place for minutes or hours or days,and watch what happens under abattery of simulated atmospheric conditions.”Weichman believes the data gathered in her lab will provide astrong foundation for decisions about solar radiation management strategies and other efforts to counteract global warming.The daughter and granddaughter of physicists,Weichman was born in California and raised in California,Colorado,and Massachusetts.She also has family roots in the Princeton area.She joined Princeton chemistry in 2020 from the University of Colorado-Boulder,where she was apostdoctoral fellow.She received her B.S.in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and her Ph.D.in chemistry from the University of California-Berkeley. 查看详细>>

Princeton University is expanding its commitment in quantum science and engineering research and education,with plans for anew building,a new graduate program,and abroader leadership structure for its initiative.These expanded programs,along with ongoing recruitment of top faculty,graduate students and postdoctoral researchers,reflect the University’s recognition of the transformative potential of quantum science and technology to benefit society in the decades ahead.The University established the Princeton Quantum Initiative in 2019 and named Andrew Houck,professor of electrical and computer engineering,as director.Now,as Princeton builds towards establishing apermanent institute for quantum science and engineering,as described in the trustees’recent strategic planning update,the initiative adds Ali Yazdani,the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics,as co-director alongside Houck.This endowment-enabled initiative will be guided by an executive committee of faculty from four departments across engineering and the natural sciences.The vision for the new institute is to bring together and support faculty and students across science and engineering who are pushing the boundaries of discovery around quantum information,particularly in the areas of quantum computing,communication,and sensing.“Quantum information continues to be an exciting area with deep,fundamental impacts on science and transformative technological possibilities,”Houck said.“Princeton is playing aleading role in this,and we are ramping up efforts across campus to remain the leading place in the world for this kind of science and engineering for many decades.”Yazdani added that Princeton’s work in this area stands apart from quantum research at other institutions due to the University’s inclusive approach across disciplines and across the spectrum from foundational science to innovative devices.“With this commitment to constructing abuilding to house the institute,we have the opportunity to coalesce research and teaching across many disciplines under one roof,”Yazdani said.“It allows us to build acohesive effort that has acore but touches many other areas of science and engineering.”The new building will be within easy reach of scholars in engineering,physics,and chemistry,Yazdani said.The initiative also benefits from agrowing number of collaborations with scientists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory,a U.S.Department of Energy national laboratory managed by Princeton University,including work to design highly specialized materials such as diamonds and superconducting magnets that are needed for quantum experiments and technologies.The newly established executive committee includes Waseem Bakr,professor of physics;David Huse,the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics;Nathalie de Leon,associate professor of electrical and computer engineering;Ran Raz,professor of computer science;Leslie Schoop,associate professor of chemistry;and Jeff Thompson,associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. 查看详细>>

Dominick will conclude a40-year career in information technology that has included serving as chief information officer at Princeton,Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.The University will soon begin asearch for his successor.“Every day at Princeton has been fulfilling,”Dominick said.“I will miss working with the incredibly smart faculty and staff who are dedicated to the noble teaching and research mission of this wonderful University.The one thing that Ilearned at Princeton that Iwill never forget is to pursue excellence—fully and without reservation.That is what makes Princeton aspecial place.”President Christopher L.Eisgruber said he is grateful for Dominick’s leadership and expertise.“During more than adecade at Princeton,Jay Dominick has done everything this University could want from achief information officer:He has demonstrated technical agility,managerial savvy,superb citizenship,and acalm,collegial demeanor in even the most trying circumstances,”Eisgruber said.“I will be forever grateful to him,and to his organization,for the professionalism,skill and energy they demonstrated when we had to move our enterprise online during the COVID pandemic.”Provost Jennifer Rexford,the Gordon Y.S.Wu Professor in Engineering,said she’s had the pleasure of working with Dominick on administrative,academic and research projects.“I am so glad Ihad the opportunity to work closely with Jay over the years,in my roles as aresearcher,as chair of the Department of Computer Science and now as provost,”Rexford said.“Jay is remarkable in his combination of broad perspective,deep knowledge and keen insight,coupled with his being agreat communicator across awide range of audiences.”During Dominick’s tenure,OIT led significant projects to expand,improve and modernize the technology resources that are integral to teaching,learning,research and administrative operations. 查看详细>>

Kocher,an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics,is investigating what shapes variation in social behavior.Her lab has developed new tools to study social behavior across different scales,from the molecular building blocks of the“social brain”to the ecological and evolutionary forces that shape social evolution.Her research focuses on aunique group of bees that includes solitary,social,and socially flexible lineages.In these bees,social behavior has been independently gained and lost multiple times,creating an ideal framework for uncovering the factors shaping social behavior and its evolution.After completing her B.S.as one of the first graduates of the Integrative Biology program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,Kocher went on to study the genetic and physiological underpinnings of queen-worker interactions in honey bees at North Carolina State University,where she completed her Ph.D.in 2009.At Princeton,her lab group combines genetic studies with field work and laboratory observations to understand the wide variations in insects’social behavior.By weaving together genetics,genomics,observations and experiments,her team is able to identify both the key molecular mechanisms underlying these behavioral variations and the environmental factors that influence them.Among Kocher’s other major awards are a2022 Pew Scholarship in the Biomedical Sciences from the Pew Charitable Trusts,a 2021 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation,and a2019 New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health.“Each of our Freeman Hrabowski Scholars has demonstrated their unique potential to advance cutting-edge science and carve out pathways for the inclusive development of postdocs,students,and other researchers,”said HHMI Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer Leslie Vosshall.“We are thrilled to welcome this inaugural cohort to HHMI,and we are proud to support each Scholar’s contributions to the broader scientific community in the years to come.”Freeman Hrabowski Scholars will be appointed to afive-year term,renewable for asecond five-year term after asuccessful progress evaluation.Each scholar will receive up to$8.6 million over 10 years,including full salary,benefits,a research budget and scientific equipment.In addition,they will participate in professional development to advance their leadership and mentorship skills.HHMI anticipates that the scholars will work toward becoming leaders in their field and believes that,by fostering equitable and inclusive environments in their labs,these scholars will provide astrong foundation for their trainees’future success in science.“The Freeman Hrabowski Scholars program reflects HHMI’s continued commitment to supporting people,not projects,”said HHMI President Erin O’Shea.“We aim to provide Scholars with the resources they need to pursue scientific breakthroughs and empower others to ask critical research questions.In this way,our Scholars are well positioned to make an indelible impact on the future of science.”The Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program represents akey component of HHMI’s diversity,equity and inclusion commitment.Over the next 20 years,HHMI expects to hire and support up to 150 Freeman Hrabowski Scholars—appointing roughly 30 every other year for the next 10 years.The Institute has committed up to$1.5 billion for the Freeman Hrabowski Scholars to be selected over the next decade.HHMI named the program in honor of Freeman A.Hrabowski III,President Emeritus of the University of Maryland,Baltimore County,and amajor force in increasing the number of scientists,engineers and physicians from backgrounds underrepresented in science in the U.S.HHMI announced the launch of the Freeman Hrabowski Scholars program in May 2022. 查看详细>>

Princeton University senior?Sydnae Taylor has been awarded aGates Cambridge Scholarship.The awards give outstanding students from outside the United Kingdom the opportunity to pursue postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge.The program was established in 2000 by adonation to Cambridge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to build aglobal network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others.Taylor is among 77 U.S.and international winners of the scholarship.Taylor is from Kingston,Jamaica.She plans to pursue an MPhil in health,medicine and society at Cambridge.She then intends to obtain her Ph.D.in apublic health-related field and pursue acareer in global health in developing countries.“I am especially galvanized to dedicate my efforts towards collaborating with leaders in the Ministry of Health in Jamaica to support areas of maternal and child health as well as healthcare system building,”Taylor wrote in her personal statement for the award.For her senior thesis,Taylor,a concentrator in medical anthropology who is also pursuing acertificate in global health and policy,is conducting across-cultural study about obstetrics in developing countries.As part of her research,she shadowed gynecologists,pediatricians and general practitioners in primary-care clinics and specialized hospitals in La Paz and Tarija,Bolivia,for eight weeks,with funding from Princeton’s Global Health Scholars Program and the International Internship Program.“Sydnae Taylor stands out as one of the top undergraduate students Ihave worked with,”said Agustín Fuentes,professor of anthropology,noting her“remarkable talent for research and analyses.”He added:“She is also aprofessional and collegial colleague,who understands the complexity,nuance and rigor required in truly collaborative projects.”At Princeton,Taylor serves as astudent representative in the Global Health Program and is aformer research fellow for the Art Hx:Visual and Medical Legacies of British Colonialism Project,working with afive-member digital humanities team.She is also amember of student advisory boards with the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship(ProCES)and the Department of Music.In summer 2021,she served as an intern(remote)with Bolivia’s Child Family Health International through the International Internship Program.Her global healthcare experience also includes serving as aconsultant for one year(remote)with Fòs Feminista in Panama.She is amember of Butler College,where she is an RCA.Taylor has also served as the vice president of logistics for the Africa Summit at Princeton,and co-led the team that started the New Venture Competition at the summit—an opportunity for early-stage tech entrepreneurs based in Africa to learn,network and compete for capital needed to launch their businesses. 查看详细>>

“Our work has direct implications on sustainability,not only for renewable energy,but for sustainable biomanufacturing,”said Princeton University’s JoséAvalos,a co-investigator at one of the four centers and associate professor of chemical and biological engineering(CBE)and the Andlinger Center for Energy.“That is what,deep down,drives my work,”Avalos said,“the hope that one day,we will contribute to producing renewable energy,or any of the products that we use on aregular basis,in amore sustainable way.”Princeton professors Joshua Rabinowitz and Christos Maravelias are also significant Bioenergy Research Center collaborators.“To meet our future energy needs,we will need versatile renewables,”said U.S.Secretary of Energy Jennifer M.Granholm.“Continuing to fund the important scientific work conducted at our Bioenergy Research Centers is critical to ensuring these sustainable resources can be an efficient and affordable part of our clean energy future.”The four centers,each led by anational laboratory or university,are the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center,the Center for Bioenergy Innovation,the Joint BioEnergy Institute,and the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation(CABBI).The renewed investment in these centers promises to yield arange of important new products and fuels derived directly from non-food plant biomass,such as switchgrass,poplar,energy cane and energy sorghum.Princeton’s Rabinowitz,professor of chemistry and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics,is one of the three leaders for CABBI’s“conversion”efforts,using yeasts to convert biomass into biodiesel,organic acids,jet fuels,lubricants and alcohols.One species of yeast,Issatchenkia orientalis,is best known for fermenting cocoa beans(a vital step in chocolate production),but Rabinowitz and Avalos are using it to convert biomass into the chemicals and materials traditionally produced from petroleum.Their other primary tool,the yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides,has a“very reactive lipid metabolism,which means that it loves to eat and loves to make oils and oily chemicals,including diesel,”Avalos explained.“We’re eager to apply our growing knowledge of metabolism to address one of the world’s biggest problems,which is renewable energy,”said Rabinowitz.“Many of the key steps from plant waste to biofuel involve metabolism,specifically yeast’s metabolism,so want to ply our tools to figure out exactly where the molecules are going:Where are they going that we don’t want them to go?How can we get them back on track?What are the barriers to efficient conversion of plant waste into biofuels?”Rabinowitz has been with CABBI since its beginning,but Avalos only recently joined CABBI’s team of researchers.“My work and Josh’s is very complementary,because he is very good at studying metabolic pathways—identifying bottlenecks and branching points and things like that—and in my lab,we have developed the ability to control yeast metabolism using light,”Avalos said.“If you think of yeast’s metabolism as aseries of valves,we can open or close different metabolic valves by turning light on and off,”he explained.“So in combination,Josh’s team and mine can not only engineer better yeast strains,but also better understand what goes on inside the yeast cell.” 查看详细>>

One of the essential factors the COVID-19 virus needs to enter ahost is areceptor on ahuman cell—a place where the universally recognized spike protein can latch onto the cell surface,pierce it,disgorge its infectious contents,and replicate.Without areceptor,there is no replication.Without replication,there is no infection.Researchers in Princeton University’s Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular Biology have used acellular mapping technology calledµMap,introduced just two years ago by the MacMillan Lab,to uncover eight previously unknown entry points of interest for the spike protein.Four of them,researchers found,are functionally important for viral entry.The research was published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society(JACS).It could expand the suite of tools used to fight the virus,particularly as it mutates and evolves ways to evade vaccines.The collaborative project was begun at the height of pandemic uncertainty two years ago under Alexander Ploss,a leading virologist and professor of molecular biology,and David MacMillan,the James S.McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and aNobel laureate in chemistry.Scientists have known since the SARS-CoV-1 virus appeared in 2003 that its primary viral entry receptor was an enzyme called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2,or ACE2.This enzyme was confirmed in 2020 as the same receptor for SARS-CoV-2,the virus that causes COVID-19.But the Princeton project started with the assumption that ACE2 was not the only story.“We did know that there are certain host molecules that this virus absolutely depends on to enter into lung cells to cause the infection,and one of these molecules is called ACE2,”said Ploss.“So we basically said,okay,let’s see if there’s more out there.We looked for immediate binders.“But as you can imagine,the entry process is complex.The virus attaches to something and then it still has to pass through the cell membrane to get into acell,and along this way it may interact with other host factors.I don’t want to say everything is dictated by viral entry.Obviously,there are anumber of equally essential processes within the cell after the virus has entered that can influence disease severity.“But it’s obviously the first key step.If the virus can’t get in,it’s game over.”Steve Knutson,a co-author on the paper and apostdoctoral research fellow in the MacMillan Lab,added:“While the discovery of ACE2 as the major receptor was ahuge milestone,it certainly doesn’t tell the whole story of COVID pathology.Biology can be inherently promiscuous,and we guessed correctly that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein interacts with multiple host cell proteins for entry.”He added that investigations like this one are a“perfect”research fit for theµMap technology. 查看详细>>

Princeton University will increase graduate fellowship and stipend rates by an average of 25%to about$40,000 for doctoral candidates during the 10-month academic year.It is the University’s largest one-year increase in graduate student stipend rates.“Even with Princeton’s longstanding support for and sizable investment in graduate education,the coming year’s increases are remarkable,”said Cole Crittenden,acting dean of the Princeton Graduate School.“The increases in stipend rates will ensure Princeton continues to attract and retain the very best graduate candidates from all backgrounds and from all over the U.S.and the world.Our ability to support graduate students as they push the boundaries of scholarship and research in new and exciting directions is aPrinceton priority.”Princeton guarantees funding for its enrolled,degree-seeking Ph.D.candidates for all years of regular program enrollment.Ph.D.candidates receive acombination of funding to cover tuition and fees,as well as abase stipend to cover estimated living expenses.Crittenden said graduate stipends were already competitive and that rates had increased annually.“Our graduate students are engaged in important learning and research,and we do not want promising scholars in any discipline to decide not to pursue graduate study because of their personal financial situation,”Crittenden said.“This is important in all cases,but it is especially important for students who may be the first in their family to attend college as well as for graduate students who may have dependents.”For the upcoming 2022-23 academic year,the 10-month stipend rate will increase for doctoral candidates in the school’s four divisions—the natural sciences,engineering,humanities and social sciences—as follows.Two-month summer funding is also available to all Ph.D.students through various sources. 查看详细>>

The ability to edit the genome by altering the DNA sequence inside aliving cell is powerful for research and holds enormous promise for the treatment of diseases.However,existing genome editing technologies frequently result in unwanted mutations or can fail to introduce any changes at all.These problems have kept the field from reaching its full potential.Now,research from the laboratory of Princeton’s Britt Adamson,conducted together with collaborators led by Jonathan Weissman at MIT and Editas Medicine,details anovel method called Repair-seq that reveals how genome editing tools work.“We’ve known for along time that the mechanisms involved in fixing broken DNA are essential for genome editing because to change the sequence of DNA you first have to break it,”said Adamson,senior author on the study and assistant professor in the Princeton Department of Molecular Biology.“But those processes are incredibly complex and thus often difficult to untangle.”To repair DNA,cells use many different mechanisms,each involving several genes working together in distinct pathways.Repair-seq allows researchers to probe the contribution of each of these pathways to DNA repair by profiling how observed mutations change when one of these factors is removed--and to do this for hundreds of genes simultaneously.This lets scientists ask basic questions about DNA repair biology,and investigate how DNA repair mechanisms impact genome editing technologies.Adamson and colleagues first applied their method to one of the most commonly used genome editing approaches,which employs the bacterial Cas9 nuclease to cut across both strands of the double-stranded DNA molecule,creating lesions called double-strand breaks.“Editing with double-strand breaks has been the bread and butter of genome editing for along time,but making intended changes without unwanted mutations has been an enormous challenge.We set out to understand the mechanisms behind as many of these mutation events as possible,figuring that this could help us optimize the system,”Adamson said.Led by first author Jeff Hussmann,a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Jonathan Weissman,the team used the data from Repair-seq to map how different DNA repair pathways are linked to particular types of Cas9-induced mutations.Hussmann’s analysis detected pathways that were already known as well as new ones involved in the repair of double-strand breaks.It also highlighted the enormous complexity and myriad systems involved in double-strand break repair.The deep set of data unearthed in this work is now posted on an online portal that others can use to interrogate DNA repair pathways or proteins.Coincidentally,while these initial studies were being completed,a team led by David Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard was developing agenome editing system called“prime editing”that doesn’t rely on creating double-strand breaks.Prime editing typically has alow success rate,but Adamson and Hussmann reasoned that studying the DNA repair pathways involved in prime editing might help identify avenues for improvement,so they joined forces with Liu to investigate prime editing using Repair-seq.“Working together was ahuge benefit,”said Adamson.“For us,it was afantastic experience of collaborative and team-oriented science.”The collaborating researchers found that the ability to obtain intended edits with prime editing was affected by proteins in one repair pathway:the DNA mismatch repair pathway.They then showed that inhibiting or evading that pathway dramatically enhanced the efficiency and accuracy of prime editing outcomes—positioning prime editing to become apreeminent genome editing technology.Importantly,this work also demonstrates how Repair-seq can be used to improve other genome-editing technologies.Further demonstrating Repair-seq’s utility,the collaborating researchers also applied it to athird genome editing system technology,also developed by Liu.Results from that study were recently published in Nature Biotechnology. 查看详细>>

Over an action-packed three days in January,ten teams of Princeton graduate students and postdoctoral researchers forged and strengthened entrepreneurial ventures through the newly created Princeton Startup Bootcamp,led by startup accelerator firm Techstars and organized by Princeton Innovation.The bootcamp is the latest new program to launch under Princeton Innovation,led by Vice Dean for Innovation Rodney D.Priestley.“We want to support graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who are interested in pursuing entrepreneurship,”said Priestley,the Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering.“Bringing Techstars to Princeton through this intensive bootcamp is one way to complement their scholarly training.”The 33 graduate students and postdocs on the ten teams participated in virtual workshops during Wintersession on how to refine their ideas,how to develop their business models and more.Ten experienced startup founders and investors mentored the teams and provided feedback on their ideas.The bootcamp ended with avirtual pitch competition judged by apanel of friendly venture capitalists,with a$10,000 prize for the top startup.The second Princeton Startup Bootcamp,Powered by Techstars program,will return in May for anew cohort of Princeton graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.Applications will open on March 17. 查看详细>>