The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

of the

United States Federal Government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fe ...

. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Presidential Faculty Fellows Program (PFF) and subsequently the NSF CAREER Awards and the

PECASE The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. The White ...

. Applicants could not directly apply for the award, but were nominated by others including their own institutions based on their previous record of scientific achievement. The award, a certificate from the White House signed by the President of the United States, included a minimum grant of $25,000 a year for five years from NSF to be used for any scientific research project the awardee wished to pursue, with the possibility of additional funding up to $100,000 annually if the PYI obtained matching funds from industry. Considered to be one of the highest honors granted by the National Science Foundation, the award program was criticized in 1990 as not being the best use of NSF funds in an era of tight budgets.

Recipients

PYI award recipients include: * Narendra Ahuja, computer science, 1984 * Alice Agogino, engineering, 1985 *

Paul Alivisatos Armand Paul Alivisatos (born November 12, 1959) is an American chemist who serves as the 14th president of the University of Chicago. He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use i ...

, chemistry, 1991 *

Peter B. Armentrout Peter B. Armentrout (born 1953) is a researcher in thermochemistry, kinetics, and dynamics of simple and complex chemical reactions. He is a Chemistry Professor at the University of Utah. Career Armentrout received his B.S. degree from Case W ...

, chemistry, 1984 * David P. Anderson, computer science * Kenneth Balkus, chemistry, 1991 * Prithviraj Banerjee, computer systems architecture, 1987 * Paul F. Barbara, chemistry, 1984 *

Christoph Beckermann Christoph Beckermann is a University of Iowa Foundation Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Iowa. He also directs the Solidification Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering there. Education Bec ...

, mechanical engineering, 1989 *

Mary Beckman Mary Esther Beckman (born September 1953) is a Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the Ohio State University. Career Beckman received her PhD from Cornell University in 1984. She was a Postdoctoral member of the technical staff in "Linguistics a ...

, linguistics, 1988 *

Mladen Bestvina Mladen Bestvina (born 1959) is a Croatian-American mathematician working in the area of geometric group theory. He is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Utah. Biographical info Mladen Bestvina is a thr ...

, mathematics, 1988 * Sanjay Banerjee, electrical engineering, 1988 * Jonathan Block, mathematics, 1993 * Rogers Brubaker, sociology, 1994 * Robert Bryant, mathematics, 1984 * Stephen Z. D. Cheng, polymer science, 1991 *

Paul Alan Cox Paul Alan Cox is an American ethnobotanist whose scientific research focuses on discovering new medicines by studying patterns of wellness and illness among indigenous peoples. Cox was born in Salt Lake City in 1953. Education After receiving h ...

, evolutionary ecology and ethnobotany, 1985 * Judith Curry, climate science, 1988 * Supriyo Datta, electrical engineering, 1984 * Rina Dechter, computer science, 1991 * Chris Q. Doe, Biology, 1990 *

Bruce Donald Bruce Randall Donald (born 1958) is an American computer scientist and computational biologist. He is the James B. Duke Professor of Computer Science and Biochemistry at Duke University. He has made numerous contributions to several fields in ...

, computational biology, 1989 *

David L. Donoho David Leigh Donoho (born March 5, 1957) is an American statistician. He is a professor of statistics at Stanford University, where he is also the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the Humanities and Sciences. His work includes the develop ...

, statistics, 1985 * Lin Fanghua, mathematics, 1989 * Juli Feigon, biochemistry, 1989 *

Eric Fossum Eric R. Fossum (born October 17, 1957) is an American physicist and engineer, which with the help of other JPL scientists, co-developed some features of the CMOS image sensor. He is currently a professor at Thayer School of Engineering in Dartmou ...

, electrical engineering
1986
*

Jennifer Freyd Jennifer Joy Freyd (; born October 16, 1957, in Providence, Rhode Island) is an American researcher, author, educator, and speaker. Freyd is an extensively published scholar who is best known for her theories of betrayal trauma, DARVO, instit ...

, psychology * Elaine Fuchs, cell biology, 1984-1989 * Gerald Fuller, chemical engineering *

Huajian Gao Huajian Gao (, born December 7, 1963) is a Chinese-American mechanician who is widely known for his contributions to the field of solid mechanics, particularly on the micro- and nanomechanics of thin films, hierarchically structured materials, a ...

, materials science * Mark S. Ghiorso, geological sciences, 1985 * Leslie Greengard, advanced comp research program and computational mathematics, 1990
Mark Henderson
mechanical engineering, 1987 * Bruce Hajek, 1984 * John L. Hennessy, computer science, 1984 *

Jacqueline Hewitt Jacqueline Nina Hewitt (born September 4, 1958) is an American astrophysicist. She was the first person to discover an Einstein ring. She is a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society. Early life and education Hewitt was born in Washington, ...

, physics, 1991 * David Hillis, evolutionary biology, 1987 * John M. Hollerbach, haptics and tactile perception, 1984 *

Kathleen Howell Kathleen Howell is an American scientist and aerospace engineer known for her contributions to dynamical systems theory applied to spacecraft trajectory design which led to the use of halo orbit in multiple NASA space missions. She is currently the ...

, astronomy, 1984 * Ellen Hildreth, computer vision, 1987 * Paul Hudak, computer science, 1985 *

Christopher R. Johnson Christopher Ray Johnson (born January 17, 1960, in Kansas City, Kansas) is an American computer scientist. He is a distinguished professor of computer science at the University of Utah, and founding director of the Scientific Computing and Imagi ...

, computer graphics and visualization, 1994 * Nan Marie Jokerst, electrical engineering, 1990 * Moshe Kam, electrical engineering, 1990 * David B. Kaplan, physics, 1990 * Mehran Kardar, physics, 1989 * Karen Kavanagh, physics, 1991 *

Susan Kidwell Susan M. Kidwell is an American paleontologist and geologist at the University of Chicago. Her research has focused on the relationships between fossil concentrations and sequence stratigraphy, experimental taphonomy, and the implications of the ...

, geology, 1986 * Vijay Kumar (roboticist), 1991 *

Jacqueline Krim Jacqueline Krim is an American condensed matter physicist specializing in nanotribology, the study of film growth, friction, and wetting of nanoscale surfaces. She is a Distinguished University Professor of Physics at North Carolina State Univer ...

, materials research, 1986 *

James W. LaBelle James W. LaBelle is an American physicist. He received his B.S. from Stanford University in 1980, his M.S. from Cornell University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1985. He is currently professor and former department chair in the Department ...

, physics, 1990 * Robert L. Last, plant biology, 1990 * Edward A. Lee, electrical engineering, 1997 * Kevin K. Lehmann, chemistry, 1985 *

Charles E. Leiserson Charles Eric Leiserson is a computer scientist, specializing in the theory of parallel computing and distributed computing, and particularly practical applications thereof. As part of this effort, he developed the Cilk multithreaded language. ...

, computer science, 1985 *

John H. Lienhard V John Henry Lienhard V (born 1961) is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water and Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on desalination, heat transfer, and thermodynamics. He has also written ...

, mechanical engineering, 1988 * John Edwin Luecke, mathematics, 1992 *

Udi Manber Udi Manber ( he, אודי מנבר) is an Israeli computer scientist. He is one of the authors of agrep and GLIMPSE. After a career in engineering and management, he worked on medical research. Education He earned both his bachelor's degree in 19 ...

, computer science, 1985 * Eric Mazur, physics * Mark McMenamin, geology, 1988 *

Eckart Meiburg Eckart Heinz Meiburg (born 1959) is a German-American professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Fulvio Melia Fulvio Melia (born 2 August 1956) is an Italian- American astrophysicist, cosmologist and author. He is professor of physics, astronomy and the applied math program at the University of Arizona and was a scientific editor of ''The Astrophysical ...

, astrophysics, 1988 * Carolyn Meyers, chemical engineering * Michael I. Miller,

biomedical engineering Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare purposes (e.g., diagnostic or therapeutic). BME is also traditionally logical sciences ...

* Robert F. Murphy (computational biologist), 1983 * Monica Olvera de la Cruz, Materials Physics, 1989 * Jon Orloff, physics, 1984 * Randy Pausch, computer science *

Gregory A. Voth Gregory A. Voth (born January 22, 1959) is a theoretical chemist and Haig P. Papazian Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He is also a professor of the James Franck Institute and the Institute for Biophysic ...

, Chemistry, 1991 * Joseph R. Pawlik, biological oceanography, 1991 *

Ken Perlin Kenneth H. Perlin is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University, founding director of the Media Research Lab at NYU, director of the Future Reality Lab at NYU, and the Director of the Games for Learning Institute. He ...

, computer graphics, 1991 * Ronald T. Raines, chemical biology *

Lisa Randall Lisa Randall (born June 18, 1962) is an American theoretical physicist working in particle physics and cosmology. She is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science on the physics faculty of Harvard University. Her research includes the funda ...

, theoretical physicist, 1992 *

Eric Sven Ristad The given name Eric, Erich, Erikk, Erik, Erick, or Eirik is derived from the Old Norse name ''Eiríkr'' (or ''Eríkr'' in Old East Norse due to monophthongization). The first element, ''ei-'' may be derived from the older Proto-Norse ''* ain ...

, artificial intelligence, 1992 *

Mark O. Robbins Mark Owen Robbins was an American condensed matter physicist who specialized in computational studies of friction, fracture and adhesion, with a particular focus on nanotribology, contact mechanics, and polymers. He was a professor in the depar ...

, Materials Research, 1985 *

Ares J. Rosakis Ares J. Rosakis, Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Caltech, California Institute of Technology. He was also the fifth Director of the GALCIT, Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, known as (G ...

, 1985 *

Karl Rubin Karl Cooper Rubin (born January 27, 1956) is an American mathematician at University of California, Irvine as Thorp Professor of Mathematics. Between 1997 and 2006, he was a professor at Stanford, and before that worked at Ohio State University ...

, mathematics *

Rob A. Rutenbar Rob A. Rutenbar (born November 19, 1957) is an American academic noted for contributions to software tools that automate analog integrated circuit design, and custom hardware platforms for high-performance automatic speech recognition. He is Sen ...

, computer engineering, 1987 * Sunil Saigal, civil engineering, 1990 *

Peter Salovey Peter Salovey (; born February 21, 1958) is an American social psychologist and current President of Yale University. He previously served as Yale's Provost, Dean of Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Dean of Yale College. Salovey i ...

, psychology * Aziz Sancar, molecular biophysics, 1984 *

Robert Sapolsky Robert Morris Sapolsky (born April 6, 1957) is an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author. He is a professor of biology, and professor of neurology and neurological sciences and, by courtesy, neurosurgery, at Stanford University. In ad ...

, neuroendocrinology *

Terrence Sejnowski Terrence Joseph Sejnowski (born 13 August 1947) is the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory and is the director of the Crick-Jacobs center for theoretical ...

, neuroscience, 1984 * Michael Steer, electrical engineering, 1986 * Joann Stock, earth science, 1990 * Howard A. Stone, chemical, bioengineering, environmental, and transport systems, 1989 *

Steven Strogatz Steven Henry Strogatz (), born August 13, 1959, is an American mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. He is known for his work on nonlinear systems, including contributions to the study o ...

, mathematics, 1990 * Éva Tardos, algorithm analysis * Patricia Thiel, chemistry, 1985 *

Masaru Tomita is a Japanese molecular biologist and computer scientist, best known as the director of the E-Cell simulation environment software and/or the inventor of GLR parser algorithm.Tomita M. (1984).LR parsers for natural languages. COLING. 10th Intern ...

, computational biology, 1988 * Mary K. Vernon, computer science, 1985 *

Jeffrey Vitter Jeffrey Scott Vitter is a U.S. computer scientist and academic administrator. Born in 1955 in New Orleans, Vitter has served in several senior higher education administration posts. He is a former chancellor of the University of Mississippi (O ...

, computer science, 1985 * Margaret Werner-Washburne, molecular biology, 1990 * Ellen D. Williams (scientist), materials research, 1984 * Martin Yarmush, biochemical engineering, 1988
Todd Yeates
biochemistry, 1991 * Alex Zettl, physics, 1984 *

Steven Zimmerman Steven Charles Zimmerman is an American organic chemist who is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Early life and education He was born in Chicago in 1957, the second son of the organic ...

, chemistry * Munther A. Dahleh, 1991 * Yannis Ioannidis, 1991.

NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship

The NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship (PFF) program was launched by President George H.W. Bush to honor 30 young engineering and science professors. The awards were up to $100,000 per year for 5 years.

PFF recipients

* David Culler, Computer Science, 1992 * Theodore (Ted) Rappaport, Wireless Communications, 1992 * Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Electrical/Bioengineering, 1992 * Louise H. Kellogg, Geophysics, 1992

References

Federal government of the United States Science and technology awards {{Improve categories, date=January 2021

Recipients

NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship

PFF recipients

See also

References