On May 6, 2014 DuPont named 10 young faculty members from around the world to its 2014 Class of Young Professors as part of its corporate efforts to recognize innovative research.

Over the next three years, the company will provide this group of professors with $600,000 to support their work in advancing basic science to meet global challenges in food, energy and protection.

The DuPont Young Professor program is designed to help promising young and untenured research faculty who work in areas of interest to DuPont begin their research careers. One of the most sustained corporate programs for academic research, the program has spanned over four decades, providing over $50 million in grants to nearly 700 young professors in nearly 140 institutions in 14 countries since 1968.

Research interests within the class of 2014 Young Professors represent key components of DuPont science, and include promising research in the fields of plant biology and reproduction, biotechnology, microfluidics, nanoscience, materials science and organic chemistry.

“Academic research is at the core of a strong science community,” said DuPont Senior Vice President and Chief Science & Technology Officer Douglas Muzyka. “This program is an excellent way for DuPont, as a science company, to help stimulate a collaborative research environment that will help provide food, energy and protection for the world’s growing population.”

In addition to providing unrestricted funding to new faculty, the program enables DuPont to build future research partnerships with emerging global academic leaders. Professors are nominated by a member of the DuPont technical staff and the nominator serves as the liaison between the company and the faculty member. During the three-year award, each grant recipient is invited to present a seminar on his or her work to the DuPont research community.

Members of the DuPont Young Professor Class of 2014 represent 10 universities on two continents. This year, awards were made to the following faculty members:
Jiun-Tai Chen, Department of Applied Chemistry, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Guangbin Dong, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Randy Ewoldt, Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Micah Green, Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas Tech University, USA
Farren Isaacs, Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology & Systems Biology, Yale University, USA
Jeremiah Johnson, Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Ravi Maruthachalam, School of Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research – Thiruvananthapuram, India
Pamela Peralta-Yahya, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Feng Qin, Key Laboratory of Plant Molecular Physiology, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Leslie Shor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Connecticut, USA

Source: DuPont/dupont.com