UC Davis: Chemist, Mathematician Win Sloan Fellowships

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded research fellowships to two assistant professors at the University of California, Davis, one a chemist attempting to mimic how plants turn sunlight into fuel and the other a mathematician studying wave reflections from complex objects.

The fellowships, worth $50,000 over two years, are given to early career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars of the next generation of scientific leaders.

Chemist Louise Berben and mathematician James Bremer came to UC Davis as a result of recent campus hiring initiatives in energy and fundamental physics, said Winston Ko, dean of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences in the College of Letters and Science. "Their Sloan fellowships confirm the increasing excellence of the faculty we are building," Ko said.

Berben is using metal catalysts to turn carbon dioxide into organic molecules, such as formate, formaldehyde and methanol, which can be used as fuels. Her ultimate aim is to use electrons from photovoltaic cells to convert carbon dioxide to liquid fuel.

Her research focuses on new complexes and clusters based on elements such as iron and aluminum that are abundant in the earth and cheap. She studies how these materials can act as catalysts to convert carbon dioxide into more complex molecules, and can act on organic molecules called alkanes, a group which includes methane, propane and butane.

Berben earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 2000 and her doctorate from UC Berkeley in 2005. She joined the UC Davis faculty in 2009 after postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also holds a diploma in piano performance from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Bremer's research interests are in computational mathematics, numerical science and computational harmonic analysis. More simply, he is interested in what happens when waves reflect from complex surfaces.

Radar and sonar work by bouncing radio or sound waves off objects and listening to the return signals. For simplicity, engineers usually consider waves bouncing off simple, smooth objects and surfaces. But real objects like jumbo jets and submarines have curves, corners and antenna, Bremer said. His work explores what the return echoes from geometrically complicated objects should look like.

Bremer earned joint bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2001, and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University in 2007. He joined the UC Davis faculty in 2007.

Berben and Bremer are among 126 U.S. and Canadian researchers to be awarded Sloan Research Fellowships this year.

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