Two Northwestern professors have been honored for their early-career scientific research ventures, the University announced Wednesday.

Economics Prof. Bruno Strulovici and physics Prof. Nathaniel Stern each recently won the Sloan Research Fellowship for 2013, an esteemed research opportunity worth $50,000 and awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. A total of 126 early-career scientific scholars received the fellowships this year, selected from 61 colleges and universities across the United States and Canada.

Strulovici’s research focuses on dynamic learning and decision-making, as well as a broader look at how changes to economic environments impact individuals’ choices. His research projects range from examining the movement of capital in financial and insurance markets to how voting rules can influence social transformations, the release said.

Stern works with nanostructure and quantum computing and does research on interactions between light, matter and magnetism on a microscopic scale. According to the release, he works with the boundary between optical and condensed matter physics.

In addition to economics and physics, the Sloan fellowships are given in six other scientific fields — mathematics, neuroscience, chemistry, computer science, ocean sciences and computational and evolutionary molecular biology.

The Sloan Foundation has been administering the fellowship opportunities every year since 1955, with assistance from members of the scientific community. In order to qualify for the award, researchers must be nominated by their peers and then selected by an independent panel of scholars.

— Lauren Caruba