URBANA, Ill. -- The Beckman Institute is pleased to announce the 2008 Beckman Fellows. The Beckman Institute Fellows program provides an excellent opportunity for young scholars to initiate a post-Ph.D. career of independent research in a stimulating and supportive interdisciplinary environment.
The 2008 Fellows are appointed for up to three years and will be begin as early as July of this calendar year. They are selected based on evidence of professional promise, capacity for independent work, outstanding achievement, and interdisciplinary research interests that correspond to one or more of the Beckman Institutes research initiatives.
The Beckman Fellows for 2008 are:
Jacob Eisenstein
Jacob is currently a post-doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is expected to earn his Ph.D. in Computer Science in June of 2008. His research focuses on non-verbal modalities such as gestures that supplement speech. At the Beckman Institute he plans to build computational statistical models of the relationship between gesture, speech, and discourse with the goal of improving natural language understanding.
Agustín Mihi
Agustín will join the Beckman Institute from the Spanish National Research Council where in July of 2008 he will complete his Ph.D. work at its Institute of Materials Science of Seville. His research explores new optical architectures to enhance light harvesting efficiency in solar cells. At the Beckman Institute, Agustín will work towards his goal of developing new generation solar cells that are more efficient, less expensive, and easier to implement than current options.
Amy Shih
This spring Amy will complete her Ph.D. in Biophysics and Computational Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are focused on biophysical characterizations of the structure and function of health-relevant biomolecules. During her time as a Beckman Institute Fellow she plans to use advanced computational modeling to study proteins of biomedical and pharmaceutical interest.
Joel Voss
Joel received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Northwestern University in June of 2007. He will join the Beckman Institute after spending the past year as a post-doctoral researcher at Northwestern University. His research examines the operation of explicit and implicit expressions of memory. At the Beckman Institute he plans to use resources including the Biomedical Imaging Center to tackle key theoretical controversies in the cognitive neuroscience of human memory.