Six Cornell faculty win White House early career awards

The White House has recognized six Cornell faculty members – Andrew Hein, Tashara M. Leak and Zhiting Tian from the Ithaca campus, and Steven Josefowicz, Ekta Khurana and Kristen Pleil from Weill Cornell Medicine – with 2025 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The awards were announced Jan. 14.

The award is the highest honor bestowed by the federal government to scientific and engineering professionals who are in first stages of their independent research careers and who show exceptional promise for leadership.

Established during the Clinton administration, the awards acknowledge the advancement of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education; and community service, as demonstrated by scientific leadership, public education and outreach. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy coordinates the PECASE awards with participating federal departments and agencies.

This year’s Cornell winners (listed alphabetically):

Hein, assistant professor of computational biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, studies how organisms acquire, share, process and respond to information, and how these responses influence behavioral evolution and the dynamics of ecosystems. The Hein Lab uses data-driven computational models and theory that is closely tied to data from laboratory and field experiments. Another focus of the lab is extending modern methods from AI to transform how behavioral and ecological data are acquired.

Josefowicz, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and a member of both the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center and the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Health at Weill Cornell Medicine, researches how large genomes in complex organisms are regulated at the epigenetic level to direct development and rapid environmental responses, and how aberrant regulation leads to disease. One of the goals of the Josefowicz Lab is to apply mechanistic knowledge of epigenetic regulation and functional histone genetic tools to understand epigenetic processes in immune cell development and function.

Khurana, an associate professor of physiology and biophysics, is the WorldQuant Foundation Research Scholar, a member of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine and co-leader of the cancer genetics and epigenetics program at the Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. Khurana’s lab is developing novel approaches that integrate genomics, computational biology and systems biology to understand how differences in individual genomes impact human disease. She and her colleagues recently discovered and defined a relatively common, stem-cell like subtype of hormone therapy-resistant prostate cancer.

Leak, associate professor of nutritional sciences in the College of Human Ecology (CHE) and associate dean for CHE in New York City, designs culturally relevant interventions, in partnership with community stakeholders, that aim to improve diet, health and well-being of adolescents in urban communities. Her research informs public health programming and policy. Leak is co-director of the Action Research Collaborative, housed in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, and two of her studies include the Advanced Cooking Education program and Black Girls for Wellness.

Pleil, an associate professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine, investigates in mice how sex and stress hormones regulate how the brain controls the consumption of alcohol and illicit substances, as well as other stress and neuropsychiatric disease-related behaviors. In one recent study, Pleil and her team revealed that the hormone estrogen promotes binge alcohol drinking in females, causing them to consume large quantities of alcohol, especially in the first 30 minutes after it’s offered.

Tian, an associate professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is an expert in nanoscale thermal transport and energy conversion. Director of the ZT Research Group, Tian is known for her innovative research on polymer-based thermal diodes, hybrid organic-inorganic material thermal conductivity, and advanced thermal management in semiconductors. Her work addresses critical challenges in national security, quantum computing, and space exploration, with far-reaching implications for energy efficiency, electronics and global sustainability.

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Becka Bowyer