Natelson receives prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship

Natelson
receives prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship

BY JENNIFER EVANS
Rice News staff

Douglas Natelson,
assistant professor of physics and astronomy and in electrical
and computer engineering, is the second Rice faculty member
this year to have been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research
Fellowship.

Awarded annually
by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the fellowship is intended
to enhance the careers of the nation’s best young faculty
members who show exceptional promise to contribute to the
advancement of knowledge. In March the foundation announced
that 116 fellowships were awarded to those engaged in research
in the areas of chemistry, computational and evolutionary
molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics,
neuroscience and physics.

The Sloan Research
Fellowship carries with it a grant of $40,000, which may
be used in a largely unrestricted manner, so fellows are
free to pursue whatever lines of research are of most interest
to them.

Natelson’s
research is aimed at better understanding the physics of
electronic conduction at the nanometer scale. Natelson’s
work is of fundamental importance for engineers and nanotechnologists
interested in developing ever-smaller computer components
based upon molecular electronics. It could also play a role
in developing hypersensitive detectors for health-care and
security applications that could scan samples as small as
a single molecule.

Natelson, who
became a member of the Rice faculty in 2000, joins Assistant
Professor of Chemistry Anatoly Kolomeisky in the 2004 class
of Sloan Research Fellows.