Two young faculty members at the University of California, Davis, have won Alfred P. Sloan Fellowships and three others have been awarded Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Awards from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation.

The Sloan fellowships, worth $45,000 over two years, were awarded to Kai Liu, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics, and Roman Vershynin, an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics.

Liu makes and studies materials made up of extremely small dimensions and intricate structures. These artificial nanomaterials can have special properties not found in conventional materials. He is especially interested in their magnetic and electronic properties. His work has potential applications in new kinds of digital storage and sensing devices.

After receiving his Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1998, Liu carried out postdoctoral research at UC San Diego before joining UC Davis in 2001 as part of the NEAT (Nanoparticles in the Environment, Agriculture and Technology) initiative.

Vershynin works in the area of geometric functional analysis, which connects different areas of mathematics, such as probability theory, geometry, computer science and combinatorics -- the study of the different ways that points can be combined or arranged.

"His work is known for its astonishing beauty, overwhelmingly impressive power and new ideas that allow him to go straight to the heart of the matter," said Motohico Mulase, chair of the mathematics department at UC Davis.

Vershynin received a master's degree from Kharkiv National University, Ukraine, in 1996. He studied at the Politechnic Institute of Milan, Italy, and the Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena, Germany, before receiving his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2000. He held postdoctoral fellowships at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, from 2000 to 2001 and at the University of Alberta, Canada, 2001 to 2003, before joining UC Davis in July 2003.

The Sloan Foundation awards in the fields of physics, chemistry, mathematics, computational or evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, economics or computer science. The fellowships are intended to provide support to young researchers at the point in their careers when they are establishing independent research projects. This year, the foundation awarded 116 fellowships to researchers at 54 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Since the program began in 1955, 32 Sloan fellows have gone on to win Nobel prizes.

Like the Sloan fellowships, Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Research Awards are given to young scientists at the beginning of their independent research careers. The grants are worth $150,000 over two years and focus on basic research in how cells and embryos develop.

The March of Dimes Basil O'Connor grants were awarded to Frederic Chedin and Daniel Starr, both assistant professors in the Section of Molecular Cell Biology, and Neil Hunter, assistant professor in the Section of Microbiology. All three are members of the Center for Genes and Development at UC Davis and affiliated with the university's Cancer Center.

"To have three faculty, not just in the same institution but in the same research unit, receive these awards is unprecedented," said Stephen Kowalczykowski, professor of microbiology and director of the Center for Genes and Development.

Chedin's research in fundamental genetics is important for understanding developmental diseases and cancer. A developing embryo has two copies of each gene, one from each parent. Some specific genes are expressed, or not, depending on which parent they come from. These genes are critical for human reproductive health since they control embryonic growth and placental differentiation. In order to properly function, the DNA of these genes is chemically modified so that some are turned on and others are locked off. Chedin studies how this "imprinting" process occurs.

Chedin received his Ph.D. from the University of Paris, France, in 1995. He was a postdoctoral researcher in Kowalczkowski's lab at UC Davis from 1996 to 1999, then worked as a research associate and research fellow at the University of Southern California Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope, from 1999 until he joined UC Davis in 2003.

Hunter is interested in how chromosomes recombine during meiosis, the cell division process by which eggs and sperm are formed. This recombination is crucial for distributing chromosomes during cell division and for creating genetic variation in offspring. Defective recombination is a risk factor for pregnancy loss and birth defects such as Down syndrome.

Hunter obtained his Ph.D. from Oxford University, England, in 1996 and then carried out his postdoctoral research at Harvard University. He joined the faculty at UC Davis in 2003.

Starr uses the worm Caenorhabditis elegans in his research. During animal development nuclei or other structures within the cell may migrate around the cell and fix themselves in a new position. This process seems to be tightly controlled, as errors can lead to developmental defects and diseases such as muscular dystrophy, but very little is known about how it occurs. Starr uses the worms as a model system to try and understand this process.

Starr got his Ph.D. in genetics from Cornell University in 1998, and then was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder until 2003, when he joined the Center for Genetics and Development at UC Davis.

The March of Dimes was established in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, initially to fight polio. Today, the foundation fights health problems in babies, especially premature birth, birth defects and low birthweight. Eleven researchers funded by the foundation have won Nobel prizes, including three recipients of Basil O'Connor awards.