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 /PRNewswire/ -- 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

"This year, we are thrilled to welcome an expanded cohort of innovative young researchers into the Beckman 'family,' and to support their high risk-high reward projects over the next four years. From developing new methods for immune system control to engineering new catalysts to imaging the micromechanics of self-healing polymers, our scientists' work aims to address wide-ranging challenges, and we are excited to help kick off their creative and important projects, and to see them achieve progress and ultimately meet their objectives," shared Dr. Anne Hultgren, Executive Director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.

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 20^th 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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SOURCE Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation