The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation‘s Sloan Research Fellowship is a prestigious award for early-career scholars in fields such as computer science and physics. Zacharaiah Page of the Department of Chemistry has been named one of the new fellows.
Page received the 2024 Mark Young Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS) for her outstanding contributions to polymer science and basic research. The award is presented just once every two years to a researcher aged 35 or younger.
Page’s research focuses on developing and integrating selective chemical reactions triggered by light to: synthesize polymers quickly and efficiently; create multifunctional “smart” plastics that are mechanically robust; and produce hierarchical plastics using next-generation 3D printing technology. These materials and methods have the potential to improve societal health and well-being through applications such as stretchable electronics, soft robots, tissue engineering, and more.Page is the first Mark Young Scholar Award winner from The University of Texas at Austin, and he is one of over 100 UT academics who have been awarded Sloan Research Fellows since the program’s beginning in 1955. This year, the Sloan Foundation selected 126 researchers from a field of over 1,000 nominations. Fellows get a two-year $75,000 grant to advance their study.
“Sloan Research Fellowships are extraordinarily competitive awards involving nominations of the most inventive and impactful early-career scientists across the U.S. and Canada,” said Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “We look forward to seeing how Fellows take leading roles shaping the research agenda within their respective fields.”
Page, a faculty member in UT chemistry since 2018, has been recognized for his teaching and research, including 2022 Cottrell Scholar and 2023 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. Page is also on the faculty of the Texas Materials Institute. He will be recognized by the American Chemical Society at its annual meeting in Denver next September.