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

SOURCE Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation