This week, Thuc-Quyen Nguyen, an assistant chemistry professor at UCSB, has been awarded the Sloan Research Fellowship for research in her field.
As a recipient, she will be awarded $50,000 in a two-year period and is given leeway to use the money as she pleases for research. According to a UCSB press release on the mater, Nguyen plans to use her grant to further the research for which she was awarded: studies in organic semiconductor materials. Ultimately, she hopes to contribute to the understanding of energy conservation and how to improve it by studying it on the molecular level. “From an overall perspective,” Nguyen said, “these studies tackle fundamental, critical problems associated with emerging organic semiconductor-based technologies that generate energy and that contribute to energy conservation.”
Nguyen obtained her PhD from UCLA in 2001 and has been consistently awarded since for her academic work. She has done research at Columbia University in New York City and joined the UCSB faculty in 2004.
The New York-based Sloan Research Foundation is named in honor of Alfred P. Sloan, former president and chairman of the board of General Motors. The fellowship awarded to Nguyen focuses mainly on the projects headed by “young scholars in science, mathematics, economics and computer science,” the foundation’s Web site says. However, the fellowships are but one project under the Sloan Foundation name – many, including the Encyclopedia of Life and Public Understanding of Science and Technology, aim to broaden knowledge by compiling known information and to elicit interest from the public by making scientific jargon interesting and easy to understand.