Four Indian Americans are among those who received the U.S. Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers, the nation’s highest honor for professionals at the outset of their independent research careers.

The award was established in 1996 with the objective of honoring the most promising beginning researchers in the nation within their fields. Among the 57 researchers were Arjun M Heimsath, Dartmouth College; Sandeep K. Shukla, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; and Ravi D. Vakil, Stanford University, recognised from the National Science Foundation, and Sarah Stewart-Mukhopadhyay, Harvard University, from NASA.
What do they get? For their leadership role the recipients of the award receive monetary awards, ranging from $400,000 to nearly $1 million over five years to support their career research and education goals.

Arjun M Heimsath is Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences in Dartmouth’s Department of Earth Sciences and specializes in geomorphology. His research interests focus on the mechanical and chemical processes of land surface erosion.

Sandeep K. Shukla is an assistant professor in ECE at the Virginia Tech Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is a leading researcher in designing, analyzing and predicting performance of electronic systems embedded on a chip. He has integrated several innovative techniques and theories into novel approaches to solve problems in microelectronic systems design.

Ravi Vakil, an Alfred P Sloan Research Fellow at Stanford’s Mathematics Department is a theoretical mathematician who is at the forefront of modern algebraic geometry. He is a leading figure in the study of the moduli space of curves.