Three American-Based Women Professors Receive 2025 Suffrage Science Awards

On March 7, International Women’s Day, the MRC Laboratory of Medical Science in the United Kingdom presented the 2025 Suffrage Science Awards to 12 women scientists around the world, three of whom are professors at universities in the United States. For this year’s cohort, the award recognizes women scientists who are pioneers in the fields of engineering and physical sciences. Each awardee receives a piece of Suffrage Science heirloom jewelry and nominates who they wish to pass their award to in two years.

Danielle Julie Carrier is a professor and head of the department of biosystems engineering and soil science at the University of Tennessee. She joined the university in 2016 after nearly two decades on the faculty at the University of Arkansas. Her work aims to promote the use of renewable energy production, specifically biofuels and co-product production from cellulosic biomass.

Dr. Carrier received her bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering and her master’s degree and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from McGill University in Montreal.

Priyamvada Natarajan is the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Physics at Yale University. A Yale faculty member since 2000, she also serves as chair of the astronomy department and chair of the women faculty forum. She is a theoretical astrophysicist who is interested in cosmology, gravitational lensing, and black hole physics. Her research on the formation of black holes led her to authoring the award-winning book, Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos (Yale University Press, 2016).

Dr. Natarajan received bachelor’s degrees in physics and mathematics and a master’s degree in science, technology, and society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned her Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge in England.

Thuc-Quyen Nguyen is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she has taught for the past two decades. She also serves as director of the university’s Center for Polymers and Organic Solids. Her career in academia began as a research associate with Columbia University. In her work, she focuses on doping and charge transport in organic semiconductors, bioelectronics, and device physics of organic solar cells, ratchets, transistors, and photodetectors.

Dr. Nguyen received her associate’s degree from Santa Monica College before transferring to the University of California, Los Angeles, where she earned her bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and Ph.D. in physical chemistry.