Natalia Shustova has been awarded a 2017 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship which is a two year grant warded to early-career scientists and scholars whose distinguished performance and unique potential identify them as rising stars.  “The Sloan Research Fellowships are extraordinarily competitive awards involving nominations for most of the very best scientists of your generation from the United States and Canada,” said Dr. Paul Joskow, the president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Through these fellowships the foundation seeks to identify and support early-career scientists on the faculties of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada who have demonstrated special creative ability in chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, ocean sciences, or physics. Natalia Shustova, an assistant professor of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, searches for ways to efficiently capture the sunlight and enhance solar energy utilization through development of the crystalline hybrid materials with directional energy transfer, which are mimicking the natural photosystem behavior.