UCI professor wins fellowship

Zuzanna Siwy, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at UC Irvine, has won a $45,000 fellowship to research artificial systems over the next three years.

A UCI professor since 2005, the native of Poland is one of 116 scientists nationwide to receive the Sloan Research Fellowship this year.

The awards, intended to enhance the careers of young faculty members, are given in seven categories: chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics.

Siwy, who leads a research group at UCI of graduate students and others, said she was thrilled when she got the news last week.

“In some ways, it seemed too great to get it, so I didn’t hold out hope,” she said.

The fellowship, she said, was the first she had gotten in the United States; she previously won a Humboldt Fellowship while at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research in Germany. Siwy came to America in 2003 as a researcher at the University of Florida.

Her research at UCI centers around developing artificial systems that mimic the behavior of biological ones, and moving ions and molecules through living cells. One of her goals under the fellowship, she said, was to train more students.

“Zuzanna Siwy is an outstanding young scientist who brings a unique ability to make exciting new materials to the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Physical Sciences,” said physical sciences Dean John C. Hemminger in a news release. “We congratulate her on receiving this prestigious award.”