Fellowship Awarded to IQC Professor Andris Ambainis

Monday, February 25, 2008

IQC Professor Andris Ambainis has received a 2008 Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

A UW mathematics professor, Andris Ambainis of the department of combinatorics and optimization, has received a 2008 Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, valued at $50,000 over two years.

Ambainis, who is a member of the Institute for Quantum Computing, does research in such areas as quantum algorithms, quantum complexity theory, quantum cryptography, and classical theory of computation.

He's one of 118 outstanding young scientists, mathematicians, and economistsâ. to receive this year's Sloan Fellowships. The winners, says the foundation, are faculty members at 64 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada who are conducting research at the frontiers of physics, chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics and neuroscience.

"The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers, and often at pivotal stages in their work," says Paul L. Joskow, president of the foundation."I am proud of the Foundation's rich history in providing the resources and flexibility necessary for young researchers to enhance their scholarship, and I look forward to the future achievements of the 2008 Sloan Research Fellows."

The Sloan Research Fellowships have been awarded since 1955, initially in only three scientific fields: physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Since then, 35 Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in their fields; and 14 have received the Fields Medal, the top honour in mathematics.

Once chosen, the foundation explains, "Sloan Research Fellows are free to pursue whatever lines of inquiry are of most interest to them, and they are permitted to employ Fellowship funds in a wide variety of ways to further their research aims."