February 18, 2025
Three UW scientists named Sloan Fellows
Three UW faculty members have been awarded fellowships from Sloan Foundation. The new fellows are Amy L. Orsborn,
assistant professor of electrical & computer engineering and bioengineering, Dianne J. Xiao, an assistant professor of chemistry, and Amy X. Zhang, an assistant professor of computer science.University of Washington
Three University of Washington faculty members have been awarded early-career fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The new Sloan Fellows, announced Feb. 18, are Amy L. Orsborn, the Clare Boothe Luce assistant professor of electrical & computer engineering and bioengineering, Dianne J. Xiao, an assistant professor of chemistry, and Amy X. Zhang, an assistant professor of computer science in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.
Since the first Sloan Research Fellowships were awarded in 1955, and including this year’s fellows, 131 faculty from University of Washington have received a Sloan Research Fellowship, according to the Sloan Foundation.
Sloan Fellowships are open to scholars in seven scientific and technical fields — chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics — and honor early-career researchers whose achievements mark them among the next generation of scientific leaders.
The 126 Sloan Fellows for 2025 were selected by researchers and faculty in the scientific community. Candidates are nominated by their peers, and fellows are selected by independent panels of senior scholars based on each candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity and potential to become a leader in their field. Each fellow will receive $75,000 to apply toward research endeavors.
This year’s fellows come from 51 institutions across the United States and Canada.
Orsborn’s research aims to understand how neurons in our brains work together to let us learn to move in many different ways. She uses engineering technologies like brain-computer interfaces to manipulate how neural activity relates to movement, which gives researchers new ways to link neural activity to computations related to how they believe the brain may perform. She also uses collaborations with theorists to build models that help researchers bridge from experimental data to computational principles.
“We can quickly adapt our tennis skills to the pickleball court, but it also takes years to perfect a piano concerto,” Orsborn said. “Our flexibility likely comes from our brain’s ability to learn in many ways, but we don’t understand how neurons actually implement different learning computations. I hope to build bridges between computational principles and biological implementation, which will ultimately help us build therapies to restore movements lost due to injuries like stroke.”
Xiao’s research program designs new porous materials to address unsolved challenges in clean energy and chemical sustainability. These include developing new porous adsorbents that can use renewable electricity to drive chemical processes, as well as new porous catalysts that can convert sustainable feedstocks into useful products.
“Porous materials are the bedrock of industrial heterogeneous catalysis and chemical separations. Many of the chemicals we use in our daily lives have, at some point, been purified or chemically transformed within nano-sized pores,” Xiao said. “Going forward, new breakthroughs in porous materials synthesis are needed to harness renewable energy sources and chemical feedstocks. With the support of this award, along with the collaborative ecosystem at the UW, we hope to realize these synthetic breakthroughs faster, better and more cheaply.”
Zhang’s research reimagines the design of online social platforms to empower the public to take control of their online experiences. Inspired by offline public institutions and political theory, she creates novel social computing systems for collaborative governance of online communities and AI. She also develops tools for personal and collective customization on social media and approaches for encouraging pro-social public discourse.
“Digital platforms comprise socio-technical infrastructure that are crucial to the lives of millions, yet today they are governed and designed by a select few,” Zhang said. “As a result, many people do not see themselves represented in the decisions made and possible configurations supported by the major platforms they use. But putting the onus on end users to figure it out themselves can be overwhelming. I develop toolkits and interactive techniques informed by user needs to scaffold the process of customization, enabling both flexibility and ease of use.”
Contact Orsborn at aorsborn@uw.edu; Xiao at djxiao@uw.edu; and Zhang at axz@cs.uw.edu.
Tag(s): Amy Orsborn • Amy X. Zhang • College of Arts & Sciences • College of Engineering • Department of Bioengineering • Department of Chemistry • Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering • Dianne Xiao • Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering • UW Medicine
