Two members of the Cornell faculty have been selected to receive Sloan Foundation Research Fellowships, the Sloan Foundation has announced. They are Yuri Berest, assistant professor of mathematics, and Christiane Linster, assistant professor of neurobiology and behavior.

The two were among the 104 outstanding young scientists and economists selected as Sloan fellows this year, representing faculty from 51 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. The fellowships, totaling $4.16 million this year, allow scientists to continue their research with $40,000 each over two years. Fellows are free to pursue whatever lines of inquiry are of most interest to them.

Berest, who joined the Cornell faculty in 1999, focuses his research on the intersection of several mathematical disciplines, including mathematical physics, algebraic geometry and noncommutative algebra. A native of Ukraine, he obtained his B.Sc. (1993) and M.Sc. in mathematical physics (1994) from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Université de Montreal (1997). He was the Morrey Assistant Professor at the University of California-Berkeley from 1997 to 1999.

Linster, who joined the Cornell faculty in 2000, is primarily interested in the relationship between perceptual qualities, as measured by behavioral experiments, and neural activity patterns, as observed electrophysiologically. Her present work concerns how the central nervous system neuromodulators, acetylcholine and noradrenaline, both of which have been implicated in memory deficits such as those symptomatic of Alzheimer's disease, influence the representation and storage of olfactory information.

A native of Luxembourg, she obtained her M.S. in electrical engineering at Technical University, Graz, Austria (1989), and her Ph.D. in applied physics at Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris (1993). Before joining the Cornell faculty, she was a senior research associate in the Department of Psychology at Boston University. The selection of young scientists as Sloan fellows is based on exceptional promise to contribute to the advancement of knowledge. More than 400 scientists were nominated this year by department chairs and other senior scholars familiar with the researchers' talents. A committee consisting of 18 distinguished scientists, which this year included John C. Clardy, Cornell professor of chemistry and chemical biology, reviewed the nominations.