Meet the Top 5 USERN Prize Nominees in 2019

In less than five days, the 2019 USERN Laureates will be introduced during the USERN Congress and Prize Festival 2019. After a grueling 8 months of nomination, two rounds of voting by USERN advisory board members and even public voting, USERN Prize Deputy has shortlisted the nominees to 5 young scientists in each of the fields of Formal, Physical, Biological, Medical, and Social sciences. Here is a brief introduction on these five exceptional scientists and the projects they proposed to win the 2019 USERN Prize. 

A. Formal Sciences

1. Dr. Swantje Bargmann with his project "Development of bio-mimetic microstructured high-performance light-weight materials in the virtual lab" from the University of Wuppertal, Germany

2. Dr. Tsukasa Iwabuchi with his project "Nonlinear partial differential equations and theory for analysis on domains" from the Tohoku University, Japan

3. Dr. Lucas Lacasa with his project "Bridging sIgnal Processing and NETwork science (BIPNET)" from the Queen Mary University of London

4. Dr. Ramteen Sioshansi with his project "Techno-Economic Analysis of Sustainable Energy Systems" from Ohio State University

5. Dr. Dongrui Wu with his project "Signal Processing and Machine Learning for Calibrationless and Safe Brain-Computer Interfaces" from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China

B. Physical Sciences

1. Dr. Elizabeth Joy New   with her project "Chemical tools to light up human health and disease" from The University of Sydney

2. Dr. Giulia Grancini with her project "Multi-Dimensional Ferroelectric Hybrid Perovskites for Advanced Optoelectronics" from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy and the EPFL, Switzerland

3. Dr. Francesca Maria Toma with her project "Harnessing charge transfer at functional interfaces of energy materials" affiliated to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in USA

4. Dr. Wolfgang Richard Tress with his project "Developing New-Generation Solar Cells" from the EPFL, Switzerland     

5. Dr. Evangelos Bellos with his project "Optical and Thermal enhancement of concentrating solar collectors" from the National Technical University of Athens

C. Biological Sciences

1. Dr. Sarah-Maria Fendt with her project "Metabolic Regulation of Metastatic Growth" from the VIB institute, Leuven, Belgium

2. Dr. Rylie Green with her project "Living Bioelectronics" from the Imperial College of London

3. Dr. Ajeet Kaushik with his project "Nano-Bio-Technology for Personalized Health Care" from Florida International University

4. Dr. Livio Luongo with his project "Ketones and pain: unexplored role of hydroxyl carboxylic acid receptor type 2 in the pathophysiology of neuropathic pain" from the Università della Cmapania L. Vanvitelli, Italy     

5. Dr. Ali Maleki       with his project "Design, preparation and application of gold nanoparticle-decorated and antibody-conjugated halloysite nanotubes loaded via cytotoxic drug for cancer therapy" from the Iran University of Science and Technology 

4. Medical Sciences

1. Dr. Nicola Bragazzi with his project "Canada Medicine 4.0: Big Data for Personalized Medicine" from the University of Genoa

2. Dr. Fleur Margaret Howells with her project "Unmasking the biological mechanisms which underlie the presentation of psychosis" from the University of Cape Town, South Africa      

3. Dr. Rubem Figueiredo Sadok Menna-Barreto with his project "New challenges in neglected diseases: prospection of new drugs, biomarkers for disease progression and characterization of protozoa-host interactions" from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation of Brazil

4. Dr. Eugenia Morselli with her project "Mechanisms of Hypothalamic Autophagy in Obesity" from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de, Chile

5. Dr. Hongbo Zhang, with his project "Targeted Delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 for Advanced Liver Cancer Therapy Through c-Myc Knockout" from Åbo Akademi University, Finland

5. Social Sciences

1. Dr. Willem Eduard Frankenhuis with his project "Hidden talents in harsh conditions" from the Radboud University, Netherlands      

2. Dr. Gesa Hartwigsen with her project "Rapid redistribution in the language network" from the Kiel University, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig

3. Dr. Nathan Hudson with his project "Volitional personality trait change: Can people choose to change their personality traits?"       from the Southern Methodist University, USA  

4. Dr. Roland Pfister with his project "Towards an agent-centered perspective on rule-violation behavior" from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany  

5. Dr. Benjamin Sovacool with his project "Social justice in an era of climate change and energy scarcity" from the University of Sussex, UK