Advancing the Science of Tomorrow

Carolina’s Frank Leibfarth and Wesley Legant have each received a Beckman Young Investigator Award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, which provides grants to researchers to promote scientific discoveries and new avenues of research.

This award serves to support promising young professors in chemistry and life sciences and will grant each of these Carolina professors with $600,000 over four years to aid them in furthering their respective research.

Frank Leibfarth, an assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Arts & Sciences, will use this grant to develop a new approach toward the production of sustainable plastics with the potential to dramatically enhance their mechanical properties.

Wesley Legant, an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine’s pharmacology department and the UNC/NCSU Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, will develop new machine learning algorithms to analyze microscope data in real time as it is being acquired.

Leibfarth and Legant were among the 10 winners selected from a pool of over 300 applicants to receive the prestigious honor. The outstanding work of these faculty members has made Carolina the only university with two Beckman Young Investigators this year.

Read the complete Carolina Story…

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