CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Three Illinois scientists are among 126 recipients of the 2025 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. According to the foundation, the awardees represent “the very best of early-career science, embodying the creativity, ambition, and rigor that drive discovery forward.”
This year’s Illinois recipients are chemistry professors Angad Mehta and Lisa Olshansky, and materials science and engineering professor Yingjie Zhang.
Photo by Michelle Hassel
Mehta is a T. M. Balthazor Faculty Scholarin chemistry whose work uses evolutionary observations to design synthetic biology approaches for answering fundamental molecular questions in biological systems and develop novel translational platforms for human health. The focus areas of his lab include directed evolution to combat emerging viruses, directed endosymbiosis for evolutionary studies and synthetic biology, and engineering selectivity in targeting cancer. He joined the University of Illinois faculty in the fall of 2019 and also is affiliated with bioengineering, biochemistry, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the Cancer Center at Illinois. Some of Mehta’s recent notable awards include the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students at Illinois, a Scialog Fellowship and a Moore-Simon Foundation award from the Simons Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Olshansky’s research focuses on mimicking and then leveraging the ways that biological systems use structural changes as a vehicle for the interconversion of different forms of energy. From microbial nitrogen fixation to the photosynthetic production of the oxygen we breathe, these types of energy conversion mechanisms underlie nearly all aspects of human life. Olshansky and her team are working to answer fundamental questions regarding how these processes work, and developing new biocatalysts, biosensors and biomimetic complexes for solar energy conversion. She has been at the university since 2018 and also is affiliated with chemical and biomolecular engineering, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology, and the Materials Research Laboratory. She is the recipient of many awards, including the Searle Scholars Award, Cottrell Scholars Award, U.S. Department of Energy Young Investigator Award, Paul Saltman Young Investigator Award and Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.
Zhang studies complex interfaces and molecular systems, with the goal of 1) understanding the fundamental atomic and molecular scale processes at solid-liquid interfaces, such as dynamic solvation, electrochemical energy conversion, and catalysis; 2) deciphering the structure, distribution and function of various small molecules in liquid electrolytes and biological systems; and 3) bringing solutions to the renewable energy and healthcare industries. He joined the Illinois faculty in 2019. Zhang also is affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory and the Beckman Institute at Illinois. Before the Sloan Fellowship, Zhang was a recipient of the Doctoral New Investigator Award from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund, the Beckman Young Investigator Award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
The Sloan Foundation is a not-for-profit, mission-driven grantmaking institution dedicated to improving the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge. Founded in 1934 by industrialist Alfred P. Sloan Jr., the Foundation disburses approximately $80 million in grants each year in four broad areas: direct support of research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and economics; initiatives to increase the quality and diversity of scientific institutions and the science workforce; projects to develop or leverage technology to empower research; and efforts to enhance and deepen public engagement with science and scientists.
