NSF Recognizes Three University Scientists With The $1 Million Alan T. Waterman Award

The U.S. National Science Foundation announced the winners of this year’s Alan T. Waterman Award, which the agency describes as the nation’s highest honor for early-career scientists and engineers.

The winners, revealed on Wednesday, April 20, were: Jessica E. Tierney, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona; Lara A. Thompson, a University of the District of Columbia biomedical engineer; and Daniel B. Larremore, a University of Colorado computer scientist.

This is the first year that three researchers have been selected to receive the award, which was established by Congress in 1975 and is named for Alan T. Waterman, NSF’s first director.

As part of the award, each recipient will be given $1 million over five years to support research in their chosen field of science. The Waterman Award will be presented to all recipients at a ceremony during the National Science Board meeting, to be held on May 5 in Washington, D.C.

Jessica Tierney

Jessica Tierney earned a bachelor’s, master’s and a doctorate in geology from Brown University. Currently, she is an associate professor at the University of Arizona. She has been recognized as a Packard Foundation Fellow, an American Geophysical Union Fellow and is a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment report.

Tierney’s field of specialization is paleoclimatology, which involves the study of what Earth’s past climate was like and why. Her research focuses on understanding past climate change in order to improve our understanding of future climate events. She specializes in developing organic geochemical records of paleoclimate, derived from biomarkers that are preserved in sediments and rocks.

According to the NSF release, Tierney’s research has “redefined the understanding of global temperature changes in the geologic past and developed a new quantitative understanding of temperature and climate sensitivity to past levels of carbon dioxide.”

Lara Thompson

Lara Thompson earned a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, a master’s in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Stanford University, and a doctorate in biomedical engineering from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology program. She is currently an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the University of the District of Columbia, where she also serves as the founding director of both the university’s Center for Biomechanical & Rehabilitation Engineering and its biomedical engineering program.

Thompson is recognized for her research in rehabilitation engineering, specifically for translating her findings on vestibular disorders in primates into interventions for individuals with balance, gait and postural impairments. She “investigates various assistive technologies and robotics aimed towards improving balance in elderly individuals and survivors of stroke, as well as how such technologies can increase balance confidence and reduce the risk of falling for these groups of individuals.”

Daniel Larremore

Daniel Larremore earned a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis; a master’s and doctorate in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado Boulder. Following his Ph.D work, he completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Santa Fe Institute. Currently, he is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in the department of computer science and the BioFrontiers Institute.

Larremore explores the ways that mathematical models can support scientific discovery and policy, specifically how math can be used to track and understand the spread of human diseases.

According to the NSF release, Larremore recently used computational epidemiology to answer urgent questions about the Covid-19 pandemic, such as: “How should the first doses of a scarce vaccine be targeted to minimize deaths or infections? What role could widely available rapid testing play in mitigating viral transmission prior to the arrival of vaccines?”

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“It is a great pleasure to honor these three outstanding scientists with the Waterman Award,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan in the agency’s announcement. “They have clearly demonstrated a superb record of scientific achievements by using creative and innovative approaches that have further strengthened basic research in their respective fields. We are grateful to all of our honorees for the vital role they play in advancing the scientific enterprise. I am thrilled to congratulate each of them and look forward to their tremendous accomplishments in the future.”