The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2019 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering.

Through the program, twenty-two early-career scientists and engineers working in the fields of astronomy, biology, chemistry, ecology, engineering, and geoscience will each receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research. This year’s fellows include Peter Behroozi (University of Arizona), whose lab will work to generate a complete picture of how supermassive black holes form in galaxies; Yi-Wei Chang (University of Pennsylvania), who uses electron and optical imaging methods and innovative analytical tools to decipher the principle and mechanism of cellular processes; Bronwen Konecky (Washington University in St. Louis), who integrates field, lab, and climate model experiments to study the complex interactions between the oceans, atmosphere, and land surfaces; Jingchun Li (University of Colorado, Boulder), who studies how animals and algae work together to convert solar power into organic nutrients; and Alvaro Sanchez (Yale University), whose lab will combine genomic information, dynamic metabolic models, and high-throughput experimentation to predict how microbial communities assemble and evolve in a given environment.

Established in 1988 to strengthen university-based science and engineering programs in the United States, the program annually invites fifty universities to nominate two faculty members who are in the first three years of their faculty career and are eligible to serve as principal investigators. This year’s fellowships are supported in part by the Ross M. Brown Family Foundation.

"This new class of fellows is about to embark on a journey to pursue their curiosity down unknown paths in ways that could lead to big discoveries," said 2018 Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry Frances Arnold, who was a 1989 Packard Fellow and now chairs the Packard Fellowships advisory panel. "I can’t wait to see what direction the work of these brilliant scientists and engineers will take. Their efforts will add to this beautiful web of science that connects us all to a better understanding of the world around us."

For a complete list of the 2019 Packard Science and Engineering fellows, see the Packard Foundation website.