Trio of Caltech Professors Named Sloan Fellows
Three Caltech faculty members have been selected to receive Sloan Research Fellowships in 2025: Scott Cushing, assistant professor of chemistry; Ryan Hadt, assistant professor of chemistry; and Kareem El-Badry, assistant professor of astronomy.
The fellowships, awarded annually since 1955, "honor exceptional researchers at US and Canadian educational institutions, whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders," according to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which bestows the awards. This year, 126 early-career researchers were chosen to receive the honor, which includes a two-year $75,000 stipend that can be used flexibly to advance the fellow's research.
Cushing, who joined Caltech in 2018, creates laser-based instrumentation for the fields of chemistry, physics, biology, and materials science. He designs instruments that use ultrafast lasers and electrons to translate quantum phenomena into practical devices and applications. The Cushing lab is currently pioneering the use of high-flux compact sources of entangled photons for microscopy and spectroscopy, and is exploring attosecond- (one quintillionth of a second), X-ray, and time-resolved electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) approaches in systems varying from solar materials to batteries to molecules. Cushing earned his bachelor's and doctoral degrees, both in physics, from West Virginia University in 2011 and 2015, respectively.
Hadt, who joined Caltech in 2018, focuses on inorganic chemistry applications in chemistry, biology, and materials science. He investigates how molecular structure and bonding influence the quantum properties underlying the potential applications of magnetic molecules in quantum information science. His group also employs a range of steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopies to understand the roles of transition-metal electronic structure in photocatalysis. Hadt earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in inorganic chemistry from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, in 2007 and 2008. He received his PhD in inorganic chemistry from Stanford University in 2014.
El-Badry, who joined Caltech in 2023, is an astronomer who studies black holes, binary stars, and other exotic stellar objects using large-scale telescope surveys, targeted telescope observations, and theory. He wants to understand, among other questions, how binary star systems form, evolve, and interact with their surroundings. As an example of El-Badry's research, he has used data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission to study the subtle "wobble" in stars' apparent positions as they orbit unseen companions. This has allowed him to discover the nearest known black holes to Earth and the first dormant neutron stars. El-Badry earned his bachelor's degree from Yale University in astrophysics in 2016 and his PhD in astrophysics from UC Berkely in 2021.
Read more about the program at https://sloan.org.