A Half Dozen Women Among the 2018 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has announced the 2018 Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering. Each of the 18 new Packard Fellows will receive $875,000 over five years for them to use to pursue their research interests. Since the founding of the program 30 years ago, 595 scientists have been awarded $410 million.

Packard Fellows must be within their first three years of their faculty careers. They can be in the fields of physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, or engineering.

“It really is amazing to see what brilliant researchers can do when given the room to take big risks,” said Frances Arnold, Chair of the Packard Fellowships Advisory Panel, 2018 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, and former Packard Fellow. “And I’m not only talking about their impressive contributions to their fields — I’m also talking about building entirely new disciplines and giving back to the next generation of scientists. I’m excited to see what’s in store for this new class as it joins our welcoming community of Fellows.”

Of this year’s 18 Packard Fellows, six are women.

Kristin Bergmann is the Victor P. Starr Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been a faculty member at MIT since 2015. Dr. Bergmann holds a bachelor’s degree in geology and environmental sciences from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota and a master’s degree and Ph.D. both in geology from the California Institute of Technology. 

Mansi Kasliwal is an assistant professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. Before coming to Caltech, she was a Hubble Fellow and Carnegie-Princeton Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science. Dr. Kasliwal holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics from Cornell University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. both in astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology.

Karen Kasza is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University. Her research utilizes approaches from biology, engineering, and physics to explore how cells self-organize into functional tissues with precise mechanical and structural properties. Dr. Kasza holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University.

Ann-Marie Madigan is an assistant professor of astrophysics at the University of Colorado. Before joining the Colorado faculty in 2016, she was a NASA Einstein & Theoretical Astrophysics Center Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Madigan holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy from the National University of Ireland, Galway and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in astronomy from Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands.

Mary Caswell Stoddard is an assistant professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. She has been a faculty member at Princeton since 2016. Dr. Stoddard holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Yale University and a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Cambridge in England.

Renske van der Veen is an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has been a faculty member at the university since 2015. Dr. van der Veen holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree both in chemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and a Ph.D. in the field of ultrafast X-ray science from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Swiss Light Source.