Anton Andreev, a 31-year-old assistant professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has won a prestigious and highly competitive $625,000 Packard Fellowship.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation cited Andreev and 23 other recipients as among the most promising science and engineering researchers at universities in the United States. Other 1999 recipients included young faculty members from Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Cal Tech and the universities of California, Wisconsin and Chicago.
Andreev was the only recipient in the state of Colorado. He becomes the eighth CU-Boulder professor to receive the fellowship since the program began in 1988.
The fellowship provides each faculty member with an unrestricted grant of $125,000 per year for five years to support his or her scientific research. The fellowships are designed to enable young scientists and engineers to pursue research that may be considered too risky for standard sources of funding.
Andreev's research interests are in theoretical low-temperature condensed matter physics. He studies "mesoscopic" technology, extremely small devices where quantum mechanical effects are important, and superconducting devices. He teaches both undergraduate and graduate students.
"Anton Andreev is an outstanding young physicist with the potential to make seminal contributions to theoretical physics," said Professor John Cumalat, chair of the CU-Boulder physics department. "He has produced groundbreaking papers and he has the potential for spectacular research in the future. I am
convinced that Anton will have a major impact on the education of our physics students, undergraduate as well as graduate."
Andreev also was awarded a $35,000 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship this year.
Born in Russia, Andreev was trained at the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow and received a master's of science degree at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He earned a second master's degree at Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate from MIT in 1996.
Andreev was a visiting scientist at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J., and a post-doctoral fellow at the prestigious Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif. He joined the CU-Boulder physics department in August 1998.
Two other CU-Boulder physics professors, John Price and Leo Radzihovsky, also have won Packard Fellowships. The physics department is part of CU-Boulder's College of Arts and Sciences.
Since 1988, the Packard Foundation has awarded fellowships worth $140 million to 248 faculty members at 50 universities in the United States. Packard Fellowships are the largest non-government program providing unrestricted grants to young university faculty in science and engineering.
The 1999 fellows were nominated by their university presidents and recommended by a panel of nationally recognized scientists and engineers.
The Packard Foundation, a private family foundation based in Los Altos, Calif., provides funding for nonprofit organizations in the areas of science, population, conservation, children, arts, organizational effectiveness and philanthropy.