Biology Professor Joshua Plotkin Awarded Sloan Research Fellowship

Assistant Professor of Biology Joshua Plotkin has been named an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow for 2009. Awarded to faculty members at an early stage of their careers, Sloan Research Fellowships honor scientists who are working at the frontiers of their fields. Fellows receive two-year, $50,000 grants and are permitted to employ fellowship funds in a wide variety of ways to further their research.

Holding appointments in both the Department of Biology in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Computer and Information Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Plotkin uses mathematics and computation to study questions in evolutionary biology and ecology. His ongoing research focuses on population genetics, with the goal of understanding how organisms evolve at the molecular level.

Plotkin received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Harvard University in 1999 and his doctorate in applied and computational mathematics from Princeton University in 2003. He joined the Penn Faculty in 2007, after five years serving as a junior fellow at Harvard University.

Awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation—a philanthropic, nonprofit grant-making institution—the Sloan Research Fellowships have been awarded since 1955, initially in only three scientific fields: physics, chemistry and mathematics. Since then, 38 Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in their fields.