Two Illinois professors named Sloan Research Fellows

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Two University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientists are among 126 recipients of the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This honor is one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early career researchers. 

This year’s Illinois recipients are physics professor Barry Bradlyn and electrical and computer engineering professor Zhizhen Zhao.

Bradlyn, a recipient in physics, joined the Illinois faculty in 2018. His research centers on geometry and topology in solid-state systems, with a focus on viscous and optical responses of electronic materials, crystal symmetry in topological phenomena and topological semimetals. Bradlyn is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a Ph.D. in physics from Yale University in 2015.

Zhao, a recipient in mathematics, joined the Illinois faculty in 2016. She also is affiliated with the department of mathematics, the department of statistics, the Coordinated Science Laboratory and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at Illinois. Her research focuses on biomedical imaging, signal processing, machine learning, applied and computational harmonic analysis, data science and change signal processing to mathematical signal processing. Zhao is a graduate of Trinity College and received a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 2013.

To reach Barry Bradlyn, email bbradlyn@illinois.edu.

To reach Zhizhen Zhao, email zhizhenz@illinois.edu.