News coverage originally posted by Jerry Grillo and Bryant Wine
Jeffrey Markowitz and Anqi Wu have joined a cohort of 125 early career scholars who represent the most promising scientific researchers working today. The Sloan Fellowship awards are the most competitive, prestigious awards available to early career researchers. Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, fellowships award rising scientists $75,000 on any expenses supporting their research over a two-year term.
Markowitz’s research focuses on how the brain decides which action to perform at each moment in time – that is, action selection. He is interested in the cortical and subcortical circuits that mediate this process and how they go awry in neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.
“This is a great honor, and I’m very fortunate because this award gives us a fair amount of freedom in the early stages of our research,” said Markowitz, an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. “Sometimes, how creative you can be is defined by how flexible your support is. This award is really key as we try new, innovative things in our work.”
Wu’s research aims at leading next-generation computational neuroscience. Her research develops integrated data analysis tools to provide systematic, comprehensive understandings of neural mechanisms and biological functions, pushing the boundary of computational models for neuroscience.
“The fellowship provides significant financial support for my early-stage research career,” said Wu, an assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering. “I will use it for the research on developing advanced statistical models for neural and behavioral data analyses. My hope is to help experimental neuroscientists to decipher the massive datasets they collect and provide interpretable insights into our brain.”