Texas A&M University chemist Dr. Xin Yan has been recognized as a 2024 Sloan Research Fellow by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Yan, who joined the Texas A&M Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor in 2018, leads a research program focused on droplet chemistry, a compartmentalized ecosystem ripe with synthetic chemistry potential, from faster, more efficient chemical reactions to accelerated production of small molecules. She is one of 126 scientific researchers selected from a diverse range of 53 institutions across the U.S. and Canada for the prestigious fellowship, which has been presented annually since 1955 to honor early career scholars whose achievements mark them as among the most promising researchers in their fields. In addition, Yan is one of two honorees from Texas A&M, joining Dr. Orencio Duran Vinent, an assistant professor in the Department of Ocean Engineering, who was selected as a Sloan Fellow in Earth system science.
"Sloan Research Fellowships are extraordinarily competitive awards involving the nominations
of the most inventive and impactful early-career scientists across the U.S. and Canada,” said
Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “We look forward to seeing how
Fellows take leading roles shaping the research agenda within their respective fields.”
The two-year, $75,000 fellowships are open to scholars in seven scientific and technical fields: chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. Candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists, and winning fellows are selected by independent panels of senior scholars on the basis of a candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity and potential to become a leader in his or her field.
“We thank all the outstanding and forward-thinking institutions that nominated faculty for the Sloan Research Fellowship,” said Daniel L. Goroff, director of the Sloan Research Fellowship Program. “We are proud to partner with them in recognizing, supporting and uplifting the next generation of scientific leaders.”
Beyond being one of only 23 North American chemists selected for a Sloan fellowship this year, Yan is one of two such recipients from Texas institutions, joining the University of Texas at Austin’s Dr. Zachariah Page in representing the Lone Star State. Yan is among a distinguished list of Texas A&M Sloan Fellows in Chemistry, including current and former Texas A&M chemists Dr. Robert Lucchese (1988), Dr. Kevin Burgess (1993), Dr. Gary Sulikowski (1996), Dr. Daniel Romo (1998), Dr. Paul Cremer (2002), Dr. Oleg Ozerov (2006 while at Brandeis University), Dr. Alison Fout (2015 while at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Dr. David Powers (2020).
“I am delighted by Xin’s well-deserved selection by the Sloan Foundation,” said Dr. Simon W. North, John W. Bevan Professor of Chemistry and head of Texas A&M Chemistry. “Her innovative experimental program distinguishes her as a pioneering researcher who will continue to have a transformative impact in addressing critical challenges of biological and medical importance.”
Yan earned both her master of science in health sciences (2011) and Ph.D. in chemistry (2015) from Purdue University, then spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University prior to being recruited to Texas A&M, where she has launched an independent research program that features a cutting-edge combination of catalysis and molecular synthesis, synthetic and structural biology, and sustainability in a broader effort to develop and apply novel mass spectrometric methodologies in disease diagnosis, reaction monitoring and new synthetic methodology. In particular, the Yan Group is motivated by the possibility of enabling new technology for next-generation approaches to precision medicine and sustainable synthesis and is highly interdisciplinary, providing students the opportunity to obtain hands-on experience in various areas of chemistry while playing key roles in potentially transformational breakthroughs made possible by microdroplet mass spectrometry.
Yan’s previous career honors to date include a 2023 International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Emerging Innovator Award in Analytical Chemistry, a 2022 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, a 2022 National Institutes of Health Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award and a 2021 American Society for Mass Spectrometry Research Award. In addition to her research, Yan has been recognized for her teaching, earning selection as the 2022-23 recipient of the Montague-CTE Scholar Award in the legacy College of Science, an honor given to one tenure-track faculty member within each of Texas A&M’s academic colleges based on their early ability and interest in teaching.
The New York City-based Sloan Foundation was established in 1934 by Alfred P. Sloan, then-President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation, as a philanthropic, not-for-profit grant making institution that supports original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and economics.
Learn more about the Sloan Research Fellows Program and see the complete list of 2024 honorees.
Find additional information about Yan and her teaching, research and service at Texas A&M.