Three Northwestern professors were named Sloan Research Fellows, a prestigious award given to members of the science community who are early in their careers.

Mathematics Prof. Bao Le Hung, physics and astronomy Prof. Raffaella Margutti and biomedical engineering Prof. Jonathan Rivnay received the two-year fellowship in recognition of “their achievements and potential to contribute substantially to their scientific fields,” according to a Tuesday news release. The fellows will receive $70,000 over two years to spend on their research.

Candidates for the fellowship are nominated by their peers and are then selected by an independent panel of senior scholars, the release said, and 104 faculty members from NU have received a Sloan Research Fellowship since the program began in 1955.

“Sloan Research Fellows are the best young scientists working today,” Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, said in the release. “Sloan Fellows stand out for their creativity, for their hard work, for the importance of the issues they tackle, and the energy and innovation with which they tackle them. To be a Sloan Fellow is to be in the vanguard of 21st-century science.”

Hung’s research in mathematics focuses on the intersection of number theory, algebraic geometry and representation theory.

Physics fellow Margutti observes the electromagnetic spectrum to study events such as superluminous stellar explosions, disruptions of stars by supermassive black holes and mergers of neutron stars.

Rivnay, who was selected as a fellow in chemistry, is developing new materials and devices to bridge the gap between living tissue and traditional electronics.

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