G. Wayne Miller Journal Staff Writer gwaynemiller

PROVIDENCE, R.I. City native Melanie S. Sanford, a prominent scholar now at the University of Michigan, has been named one of three researchers to receive a $250,000 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists.

Starting with a pool of 308 nominees the most promising scientific researchers aged 42 years and younger nominated by Americas top academic and research institutions a distinguished jury first narrowed their selections to 30 finalists, and then to three outstanding laureates, one each from the disciplines of Life Sciences, Chemistry, and Physical Sciences & Engineering, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and New York Academy of Sciences said.

Sanford, 42, is this years Blavatnik national laureate in chemistry. Feng Zhang, of MIT and Harvard, is the national laureate in life sciences. Stanford's Yi Cui, is the national laureate in physical sciences and engineering.

A graduate of Classical High School, Sanford earned her bachelors degree from Yale University and a doctoral degree from the California Institute of Technology. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University and is a MacArthur genius grant recipient.

One might think of organic chemist Dr. Melanie Sanford as an architect and a builder, the Blavatnik foundation and the New York Academy wrote. Instead of designing and constructing buildings, however, her research team works on building molecules. These molecules have major applications, ranging from carbon dioxide recycling to drug discovery.

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Sanford gets national award in chemistry - The Providence Journal