Vinothan Manoharan in SEAS/Physics earns 2011 Sloan Research Fellowship

Vinothan N. Manoharan, associate professor of chemical engineering and physics in Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Department of Physics, has been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship.

The $50,000 award recognizes both Manoharan’s achievements and his potential, and will help to support his research in condensed matter and biophysics.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation selects a number of outstanding researchers annually “on the basis of their independent research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become leaders in the scientific community through their contributions to their field.”

Since joining the Harvard faculty just five years ago, Manoharan has published 15 research papers on self-assembly, complex fluids, and colloid dynamics. In 2008, he won a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation.

In his current research, Manoharan applies his knowledge of soft-matter physics and self-organization to questions in biology, exploring, for example, how to design nanoparticles that mimic the assembly of the capsid shell of a virus.