The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Presidential Faculty Fellows (PFF) program. In 1995, the NSF Young Investigator program was subsumed into the NSF CAREER Awards program, and in 1996, the Presidential Faculty Fellows program was replaced by the PECASE program. Applicants could not directly apply for the award, but were nominated by others including their own institutions based on their previous record of scientific achievement. The award, a certificate from the White House signed by the President of the United States, included a minimum grant of $25,000 a year for five years from NSF to be used for any scientific research project the awardee wished to pursue, with the possibility of additional funding up to $100,000 annually if the PYI obtained matching funds from industry. Considered to be one of the highest honors granted by the National Science Foundation, the award program was criticized in 1990 as not being the best use of NSF funds in an era of tight budgets. Frances Arnold, winner of this award in 1989, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018.
Recipients PYI award recipients include:
Ahsan Kareem, Structural Engineering, 1984 Narendra Ahuja, computer science, 1984 Alice Agogino, engineering, 1985 Judith Curry, meteorological science, 1988 Paul Alivisatos, chemistry, 1991 Peter B. Armentrout, chemistry, 1984 David P. Anderson, computer science Frances Arnold, 1989 Kenneth Balkus, chemistry, 1991 Prithviraj Banerjee, computer systems architecture, 1987 Paul F. Barbara, chemistry, 1984 Christoph Beckermann, mechanical engineering, 1989 Mary Beckman, linguistics, 1988 Mladen Bestvina, mathematics, 1988 Sanjay Banerjee, electrical engineering, 1988 Robert Bryant, mathematics, 1984 Stephen Z. D. Cheng, polymer science, 1991 Paul Alan Cox, evolutionary ecology and ethnobotany, 1985 Judith Curry, climate science, 1988 Supriyo Datta, electrical engineering, 1984 Rina Dechter, computer science, 1991 Chris Q. Doe, biology, 1990 Bruce Donald, computational biology, 1989 David L. Donoho, statistics, 1985 Lin Fanghua, mathematics, 1989 Juli Feigon, biochemistry, 1989 Eric Fossum, electrical engineering, 1986 Jennifer Freyd, psychology Elaine Fuchs, cell biology, 1984 Gerald Fuller, chemical engineering Huajian Gao, materials science Mark S. Ghiorso, geological sciences, 1985 Leslie Greengard, advanced comp research program and computational mathematics, 1990 Rajiv Gupta, parallelizing compilers, 1991. Bruce Hajek, 1984 John L. Hennessy, computer science, 1984 Jacqueline Hewitt, physics, 1991 David Hillis, evolutionary biology, 1987 John M. Hollerbach, haptics and tactile perception, 1984 Kathleen Howell, astronomy, 1984 Ellen Hildreth, computer vision, 1987 Paul Hudak, computer science, 1985 Nan Marie Jokerst, electrical engineering, 1990 Moshe Kam, electrical engineering, 1990 David B. Kaplan, physics, 1990 Mehran Kardar, physics, 1989 Karen Kavanagh, physics, 1991 Susan Kidwell, geology, 1986 Sangtae Kim, chemical engineering, 1985 Vijay Kumar (roboticist), 1991 Jacqueline Krim, materials research, 1986 James W. LaBelle, physics, 1990 Robert L. Last, plant biology, 1990 Edward A. Lee, electrical engineering, 1997 Kevin K. Lehmann, chemistry, 1985 Charles E. Leiserson, computer science, 1985 Marc Levoy, 1991 Nathan Lewis, analytical and surface chemistry, 1988 Kenneth Libbrecht, solar astrophysics, 1987 John H. Lienhard V, mechanical engineering, 1988 Udi Manber, computer science, 1985 Eric Mazur, physics Mark McMenamin, geology, 1988 Eckart Meiburg, mechanical engineering, 1990 Fulvio Melia, astrophysics, 1988 Carolyn Meyers, chemical engineering Michael I. Miller, biomedical engineering Robert F. Murphy (computational biologist), 1983 Monica Olvera de la Cruz, materials physics, 1989 Jon Orloff, physics, 1984 Randy Pausch, computer science Gregory A. Voth, chemistry, 1991 Joseph R. Pawlik, biological oceanography, 1991 Ken Perlin, computer graphics, 1991 Ronald T. Raines, chemical biology, 1990 Mark O. Robbins, materials research, 1985 Ares J. Rosakis, 1985 Karl Rubin, mathematics Rob A. Rutenbar, computer engineering, 1987 Sunil Saigal, civil engineering, 1990 Peter Salovey, psychology, 1990 Aziz Sancar, molecular biophysics, 1984 Robert Sapolsky, neuroendocrinology Terrence Sejnowski, neuroscience, 1984 Michael Steer, electrical engineering, 1986 Joann Stock, earth science, 1990 Howard A. Stone, chemical, bioengineering, environmental, and transport systems, 1989 Steven Strogatz, mathematics, 1990 Éva Tardos, algorithm analysis Patricia Thiel, chemistry, 1985 Masaru Tomita, computational biology, 1988 Kerry Vahala, materials research, 1988 Mary K. Vernon, computer science, 1985 Jeffrey Vitter, computer science, 1985 Margaret Werner-Washburne, molecular biology, 1990 Ellen D. Williams (scientist), materials research, 1984 Martin Yarmush, biochemical engineering, 1988 Todd Yeates, biochemistry, 1991 Alex Zettl, physics, 1984 Steven Zimmerman, chemistry Munther A. Dahleh, 1991 Mamidala Ramulu, mechanical engineering, 1991 Jose A. Ventura, industrial engineering, 1990 Avideh Zakhor, electrical engineering, 1990
NSF Young Investigator Program In 1991, the NSF renamed the Presidential Young Investigator Program as the NSF Young Investigator Program, to reflect more accurately the level of prestige of the award—the term "Presidential" should be reserved for awards more prestigious.
NSF Young Investigator recipients Jonathan Block, mathematics, 1993 Rogers Brubaker, sociology, 1994 Alyssa A. Goodman, astronomy, 1994 Christopher R. Johnson, computer graphics and visualization, 1994 John Edwin Luecke, mathematics, 1992 Lisa Randall, theoretical physicist, 1992 Eric Sven Ristad, artificial intelligence, 1992 Cynthia F. Moss, 1992
NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship The NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship (PFF) program was launched by President George H.W. Bush to honor 30 young engineering and science professors. The awards were up to $100,000 per year for 5 years.
PFF recipients Here are some recipients of the Presidential Faculty Fellowship.
David Culler, Computer Science, 1992 Lance Fortnow, Computer Science, 1992 Theodore (Ted) Rappaport, Wireless Communications, 1992 Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Electrical/Bioengineering, 1992 Louise H. Kellogg, Geophysics, 1992 Jerry L. Prince, Biology, 1993 Thomas E. Anderson, Computer Science, 1994 Gregory Chirikjian, Mechanical Engineering, 1994 Andrew Granville, Mathematics, 1994 Leslie Kaelbling, Computer Science, 1994 Jennifer A. Lewis, Materials Science, 1994 Alan Willner, Electrical Engineering, 1994 Ken Goldberg, Computer Sciences/Robotics, 1995 Christopher R. Johnson, Computer Sciences, 1995
See also PECASE
References