FEB. 17, 2009 – Brown assistant professors Justin A. Holmer of mathematics and Odest Chadwicke “Chad” Jenkins of computer science have been awarded 2009 research fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the foundation announced today. The awards went to 118 outstanding young scientists, mathematicians, and economists at 61 U.S. colleges and universities.

“The Sloan Research Fellowships support the work of exceptional young researchers early in their academic careers, and often at pivotal stages in their work,” said Paul L. Joskow, the foundation’s president. The fellowships provide winners $50,000 over a two-year period to support the research of their choice.

Holmer Holmer recently has focused his research on the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, one of many types of nonlinear wave equations commonly studied in physics and math. Holmer looks at special types of solutions, called solitary waves, and tries to describe what happens to them when they are disturbed or how their behavior is affected when external forces are imposed.

After earning his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Holmer taught at the University of California-Berkeley until joining the Brown faculty last fall.

Jenkins Jenkins’s work focuses on the basic building blocks of human motion with the goal of improving the interactions of robots with humans. He performs motion capture research on living subjects and uses the data to understand human movement. The data can then be used to teach robots to move in a more natural manner and ultimately to collaborate better with humans.

Last year Jenkins received a prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for outstanding contributions to his field. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Southern California in 2003 and joined the Brown faculty in 2004.