Five Princeton Professors Awarded Sloan Research Fellowships

Princeton assistant professors Ellora Derenoncourt, Boris Hanin, Chi Jin, Aleksandra Korolova, and Ian Zemke have been awarded Sloan Research Fellowships. The five are in a class of 126 early-career scholars who “represent the most promising scientific researchers working today,” according to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which awards the fellowship.

Each fellow receives a two-year, $75,000 award to advance their research.

“Sloan Research Fellowships are extraordinarily competitive awards involving the nominations of the most inventive and impactful early-career scientists across the U.S. and Canada,” says Adam F. Falk, president of the foundation. “We look forward to seeing how fellows take leading roles shaping the research agenda within their respective fields.”

An assistant professor of economics, Derenoncourt is a member of the Industrial Relations Section of Princeton’s Department of Economics and the founder and faculty director for the Program for Research on Inequality. Her research focuses on labor economics, economic history, and the study of inequality.

Hanin is an assistant professor of operations research and financial engineering. His work focuses on deep learning, probability, and spectral asymptotics. Hanin’s aim is to provide mathematical tools that allow developers to improve their designs before building the actual systems.

Jin, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, studies the mathematical underpinnings of machine learning and artificial intelligence. His work particularly focuses on reinforcement learning, which relates to decision-making through rewards and penalties in machine learning.

Assistant professor Korolova’s research interests include societal impacts of algorithms and machine learning, privacy, and algorithmic fairness and auditing. She holds joint appointments in computer science and the School of Public and International Affairs, and is associated faculty in the Center for Information Technology Policy.

Zemke, an assistant professor of mathematics, researches Floer homology, cobordism, and knot theory. He became a faculty member in 2020, after serving as a postdoctoral researcher (2017-18) and instructor for the University.

Sloan has awarded its fellowships annually since 1955 to researchers in chemistry, computer science, earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics. Fellows are nominated by fellow scientists and selected based on their research accomplishments, creativity, and potential in their field.