Presidential Young Investigator Award

The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Presidential Faculty Fellows (PFF) program.[1] In 1995, the NSF Young Investigator program was subsumed into the NSF CAREER Awards program, and in 1996, the Presidential Faculty Fellows program was replaced by the PECASE program.[2]

Applicants could not directly apply for the award, but were nominated by others including their own institutions based on their previous record of scientific achievement. The award, a certificate from the White House signed by the President of the United States, included a minimum grant of $25,000 a year for five years from NSF to be used for any scientific research project the awardee wished to pursue, with the possibility of additional funding up to $100,000 annually if the PYI obtained matching funds from industry. Considered to be one of the highest honors granted by the National Science Foundation, the award program was criticized in 1990 as not being the best use of NSF funds in an era of tight budgets.[3][4]

At least one awardee has also won a Nobel Prize. For example, Frances Arnold, winner of this award in 1989, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018.[5]

  1. ^ "Young Investigator Awards Program revised". Stanford News. Stanford University. September 27, 1991. Archived from the original on July 29, 2010. Retrieved May 23, 2023.
  2. ^ "Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program" (PDF). National Science Foundation. Retrieved January 1, 2016. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  3. ^ Zurer, Pamela S. (1990). "Presidential Young Investigator Awards Program under Review". Chemical & Engineering News. 68 (45): 24–49. doi:10.1021/cen-v068n045.p024.
  4. ^ Zurer, Pamela (1990). "NSF young investigator program may be slashed". Chemical & Engineering News. 68 (50): 7. doi:10.1021/cen-v068n050.p007.
  5. ^ "Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith and Gregory P. Winter, the 2018 Nobel laureates in chemistry". Multimedia Gallery. National Science Foundation. October 3, 2018. Retrieved May 25, 2023.