Three from Yale receive Guggenheim Fellowships

Three Yale faculty members were among 181 individuals awarded fellowships by The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The fellowships are awarded annually to  mid-career individuals who have already demonstrated excellence in scholarship, research or in the arts.

The Yale fellows are John Carlson, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; Francesca Trivellato, the Frederick Hilles Professor of History; and Xiao-Jing Wang, professor of neurobiology, of physics, and of psychology, and director of the Swartz Program in Theoretical Neurobiology.

John Carlson

Carlson is one of the world’s experts in the study of insect senses. His laboratory identified the first insect odor receptor genes and the first insect taste receptor genes. His work on mosquito olfaction has opened up the possibility of new traps and repellants to combat malaria.

His awards include the Yale College Dylan Hixon Prize for Teaching Excellence in Natural Sciences (1998) and the Genetics Society of America Medal (2011). Eleven of his Ph.D. students have won awards for their doctoral dissertations.

Francesca Trivellato

Trivellato is an expert on the social and economic history of Italy and Mediterranean Europe in the early modern period. She was awarded the 2010 American Historical Association’s Leo Gershoy Award for the most outstanding work published in English on any aspect of the 17th- and 18th-century European history for her most recent book, “The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period.”

Her other publications include a book on Venetian glass manufacturing; two co-edited volumes of essays; and numerous articles on craft guilds, merchant networks, and the history of Jewish mercantilism.

Xiao-Jing Wang

Wang is a leading theoretical neuroscientist and expert in the study of the brain mechanisms of decision-making. His group has developed neural circuit models of the prefrontal cortex, which is often called the “CEO of the brain,” and their findings have broad implications for understanding the biological basis and computational principles of cognitive functions as well as impairments associated with mental diseases. He has also done pioneering work on the neural mechanisms of brain rhythms and synchronization.

He is a member of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at Yale University. His past recognitions include Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and National Science Foundation CAREER Award.