Professor wins fellowship award

The names of the recipients of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's (ASF) Research Fellowship have been announced for 2007, and this year, one of the winners is a Tech professor. Soojin Yi, assistant professor with the School of Biology, is one of the new Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellows and will receive a two-year grant amounting to a value of $45,000.

"The new Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellows are engaged in research at the frontiers of physics, chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics and neuroscience and are faculty members at 52 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada," stated the ASF in the award press release.

Yi's general research direction is in the field of evolutionary genetics with concentrations in the areas of comparative genomics, molecular evolution and population genetics.

"It's nice to get the [fellowship]. My understanding is that the [ASF committee] looks for originality in the research. So, it is nice to have some confirmation that people find my work interesting and original."

"Since coming to [Tech], I have been working a lot on several problems in genome evolution... These problems that my group and I work on are traditional problems in the field of [evolutionary genetics]. What's nice is that we now have a lot of other data from [other fields of study]... and when you combine this data with the thinking of evolutionary genetics, you see a lot of new insights," Yi said.

One of the important distinguishing features about the ASF fellowship is that the award grant contains no restrictions. The fellows are free to pursue any research direction they choose and are allowed to apply the funds toward the purchase of equipment, professional travel expenses, technical assistance, trainee support and other expenses related to the fellow's research.

"It's nice that the money comes with no strings attached, allowing me to do whatever I want. I have been dreaming about doing some risky experiments that I couldn't afford to do before. I'm going to test regions of the genome that have been traditionally considered junk. I will work to statistically test whether these junk regions actually have some functions or not," Yi said.

Nominations for the ASF fellowship are submitted by the candidate's department chair or other senior researchers.

The candidate's qualifications, letters of recommendation and a summary of their significant scientific work are sent to the fellowship program committee. Over 500 applications are received each year with 118 fellowships being awarded this year. 35 fellows have even gone on to receive the Nobel Prize.

"I'm very grateful to [John McDonald, Chair of the School of Biology,] for nominating me. There are a lot of great people at Tech, a lot of great young scientists. Maybe in the future, others will hopefully be nominated," Yi said.

"What's happening at Tech in the field of biology is really exciting and there are a lot of people coming who are broadly associated with my field of study. Studies into evolutionary principles are becoming more and more appreciated as people are realizing that these are key to studies in the areas genomics and systems biology."

"In the School of Biology we have a very strong faculty in all of these fields and interdisciplinary thinking is encouraged. This makes it really exciting to be in the School of Biology right now," Yi said.