Beckman Foundation Announces 2026 Beckman Young Investigator Awardees
Twelve Researchers Selected to Receive $7.2M in Total Science Funding for Cutting-edge Research
IRVINE, Calif. (June 9, 2026) – The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation announced today the selection of its 2026 class of Beckman Young Investigator Awardees from U.S. colleges and universities. The awardees exemplify the Foundation’s mission of supporting the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences, particularly to foster the invention of methods, instruments, and materials that will open new avenues of research in science. They were selected from a pool of approximately 400 applicants after a three-part review led by a panel of scientific experts.
This year’s award offers $600,000 in funding over four years to each of the following researchers (alpha ordered by last name):
Gwendolyn Bailey, PhD
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
Nested Hierarchical Catalysis in Supramolecular Scaffolds: Reprogramming Iron-Sulfur Clusters for a Post-Fossil Chemical Economy
Elle Barnes, PhD
Rochester Institute of Technology*
Making it Big: Exploration of genomic gigantism in unisexual Ambystoma salamanders
Kurtis Carsch, PhD (Former Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow)
The University of Texas at Austin
Biomimetic Metal–Organic Membranes for Chemically Driven Separations
Wesley Chang, PhD (Former Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow)
Drexel University*
Modulating Pressure to Overcome Gas Transport Limitations in Electrocatalysis
Emma Chory, PhD
Duke University
Continuous Evolution of Non-coding Regulatory Elements in Human Cells
Emilia Favuzzi, PhD
Yale University
Circuit-level neuroscience methods for immune system control
Xiaotang Lu, PhD
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Multiplexed Connectomic Mapping: Brain Microcircuits Roadmaps for Health and Disease
Dakota McCoy, PhD
University of Chicago and the Marine Biological Laboratory
Chemistry and nanoscience: new tools for coral reef resilience
Monica Neugebauer, PhD
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Merging synthetic biology and organometallic chemistry to create new catalysts
Samuel Root, PhD
Case Western Reserve University*
Imaging Micromechanics of Self-Healing Polymers and Multilayers with Dynamic Speckle
Yihui Shen, PhD
University of Pennsylvania
Non-invasive profiling of single cell metabolism with superior molecular precision
Shira Weingarten-Gabbay, PhD
Harvard Medical School
Bioengineering Massively Parallel Platforms to Decode Viral Immune Evasion
About the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation
Located in Irvine, California, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation supports researchers and nonprofit research institutions in making the next generation of breakthroughs in chemistry and the life sciences. Founded in 1977 by 20th century scientific instrumentation pioneer Dr. Arnold O. Beckman, the Foundation supports United States institutions and young scientists whose creative, high-risk, and interdisciplinary research will lead to innovations and new tools and methods for scientific discovery. For more information, visit beckman-foundation.org.
*First time BYI awardee institution
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Read the news release on PR Newswire here.
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Press Contact:
Kaerie Ray, Communications Director
(949) 560-4232, [email protected]
