Georg Seelig
Anup Rao
CSE’s Anup Rao and Georg Seelig have been selected to receive 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships, among the most selective awards for young scientists.
Rao, an expert in the theory of computation, joined CSE in 2010, following graduate work at the University of Texas and postdocs at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton. His interests include finding mathematical explanations for why some computational problems are fundamentally harder than others, and discovering the limitations of efficient computational processes. These kinds of questions can sometimes lead to strange and unexpected revelations – for example, a recent sequence of work that he was involved with led to the discovery of the most economical shape for soap bubbles.
Seelig, a synthetic biologist, joined CSE and EE in 2009. He received a Diploma in Physics from the University of Basel in 1999 and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Geneva in 2003. Before coming to UW he was a postdoc at Caltech working with Erik Winfree and Michael Elowitz. He is interested in understanding how biological organisms process information using complex biochemical networks, and how such networks can be engineered to program cellular behavior. Engineered circuits and circuit elements are being applied to problems in disease diagnostics and therapy.
Hakim Weatherspoon
Rao and Seelig are the sixteenth and seventeenth UW CSE faculty members to be honored with Sloan Research Fellowships.
UW CSE Bachelors alumnus Hakim Weatherspoon, now a faculty member at Cornell University, also received a Sloan today.
See the UW press release here.