6 Accomplished Nigerian Scientists, Engineers Win US Presidential Early Career Award

Six accomplished Nigerian scientists and engineers have emerged among winners of the 2025 recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in the United States.

Established by former President Bill Clinton in 1996, the award is the highest honour bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers.

According to a report on the offical website of the White House, “The award recognizes innovative and far-reaching developments in science and technology, expands awareness of careers in science and engineering, recognizes the scientific missions of participating agencies, enhances connections between research and impacts on society, and highlights the importance of science and technology for our nation’s future.

“This year’s awardees are employed or funded by 14 participating agencies within the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency, the intelligence community, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution.”

The six Nigerian honourees include Azeez Butali, Gilbert Lilly Endowed Professor of Diagnostic Sciences, College of Dentistry, University of Iowa; and Ijeoma Opara, Associate Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences), Yale School of Public Health, Yale University.

Others are: Oluwatomi Akindele, Postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Eno Ebong, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Biology at Northeastern University;

The rest are: Oluwasanmi Koyejo, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University; and Abidemi Ajiboye, Executive Vice Chair of the Case School of Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University.

The six Nigerians are among the nearly 400 awardees announced by outgoing US President Joe Biden yesterday, Wednesday, January 14, 2025.

Below is the full list of recipients as culled from whitehouse.gov:

Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Tingyi Gu
Nathaniel Kinsey
Robert Macfarlane
Nick Parziale
Justin Wilkerson
Army Research Office

Mohit Bansal
Jerome Fox
M. Ehsan Hoque
Norman Yao
Lauren Zarzar
Bo Zhen
Department of Defense

Brian Bojko
Christena Cadieux
Joseph Cannon
Rachel Carter
Matthew Casto
Kevin Cox
Soheil Feizi
Daniel Gillaugh
Ashutosh Giri
Nicholas Glavin
Ari Goodman
Grace Gu
David Illig
Shelton H. Jacinto
Ryan Johnson
Jeffrey Lloyd
Brittany Lynn
Jesus Mares
Bryan McCranor
Sophia Merrifield
Andrew Metcalf
Sina Najmaei
Mahesh Neupane
Zachariah Page
Mary Parker
Casey Pirnstill
Ritu Raman
Keersten Ricks
Lisa Rueschhoff
Dorsa Sadigh
Leslie Schoop
Ashwin Shahani
Isaac Sledge
Alison Smith
Ngwe Thawdar
Benjamin Trump
Preston Webster
Marissa Weichman
Qi (Rose) Yu
Liuyan Zhao
Department of Energy

Oluwatomi (Tomi) Akindele
Ahmad Al Rashdan
Daniel Amador-Noguez
Kavin Ammigan
William Balliet
Jennifer Bauer
Peter Bosler
Raul Briceno
Susannah Burrows
Holly Carlton
Katerina Chatziioannou
Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena
Melissa Cregger
Zohreh Davoudi
Christine Duval
Joanne Emerson
Netta Engelhardt
Nathaniel Ferraro
Kevin Field
Laura Fields
Arianna Gleason
Rajamani Gounder
Emily Graham
Amber Guckes
Kelli Humbird
Katherine Isaacs
Andrew Jayich
Andrea Jokisaari
Vedika Khemani
Ahmet Kusoglu
Katya Le Blanc
Aeriel Leonard
James Letts
Alexander Lindsay
Amy Lovell
Cara (Carolyn) Lubner
Joseph Lukens
Xiao Luo
Gary Moore
Diana Qiu
Ruben Rellan-Alvarez
Daniel Ruiz
Lorenzo Sironi
Douglas Stanford
James Stegen
Cheng Sun
Nhan Tran
Petros Tzeferacos
Bjorn Vaagensmith
Gwendolyn Voskuilen
Bei Wang Phillips
Stefan Wild
Christina Wildfire
Caroline Winters
Ryan Wollaeger
Department of Transportation

Rafic Helou
Laura Mero
Brett Torrence
Department of Education

Elizabeth Bettini
Eunsoo Cho
Shaun Dougherty
Kristin Gagnier
Maithilee Kunda
Allison Master
Melanie Pellecchia
Jenny Root
Elizabeth Setren
Elizabeth Tighe
Environmental Protection Agency

Andrea Clements
Kate Mulvaney
Katherine Ratliff
Anne Weaver
National Institutes of Health

Benedict Anchang
Brooke Ann Slavens
Jessica Ancker
Kavita Arora
Ambika Bajpayee
Azeez Butali
Diego Bohorquez
Jayeeta Basu
Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein
Marni Boppart
Matthew Bush
Paloma Beamer
Sylvester Black
Donald Chi
Erin Calipari
Luke Chang
You Chen
Paul DeCaen
Anthony Fehr
Alexander Gusev
Kymberly Gowdy
Xiaosi Gu
Ayana Jordan
Sadhana Jackson
Steven Josefowicz
Ekta Khurana
Kristine Kuhn
Roselinde Kaiser
Samira Kiani
Yogendra Kanthi
Elizabeth Leslie
Antonina Mitrofanova
Catherine McDonald
Catherine Musselman
Elizabeth Mayeda
Shahin Nasr
Ijeoma Opara
Kassandra Ori-McKenney
Justin Parent
Kristen Pleil
Mercedes Paredes
Kanaka Rajan
William Renninger
Azizi Seixas
Diane Santa Maria
Jesse Schank
Lindsay Schwarz
Nirali Shah
Sonja Scholz
Andy Tan
Anne Takesian
Casey Taylor
Hugo Tejeda
Jacqueline Torres
Dionna Williams
Marc Wein
Zeba Wunderlich
Steven Yeh
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Matthew Biggerstaff
Rachel Burke
Sascha Ellington
Leora Feldstein
Lee Greenawald
Rebecca Guerin
Holly Hughes
Justin Lee
Ruth Link-Gelles
Robert McClung
Samuel Shepard
Mark Tenforde
Zachary Weiner
Kate Russell Woodworth
Kun Zhang
Marissa Zwald
Intelligence Community

John Beieler
Karen Grutter
David Isaacson
Andrew Medak
NASA

Natasha Batalha
Elizabeth Blaber
James Burns
Egle Cekanaviciute
Nacer Chahat
Ellyn Enderlin
David Estrada
Burcu Gurkan
Elliott Hawkes
John Hwang
James Keane
Kaitlin Kratter
Lyndsey McMillon-Brown
Debbie Senesky
Helene Seroussi
Timothy Smith
Mitchell Spearrin
Michelle Thompson
Mary Beth Wilhelm
National Institute of Standards and Technology

Kyle Anderson
Megan Cleveland
Ann Debay
Stephen Eckel
Alexander Grutter
David Hoogerheide
Adam Kaufman
Nikolai Klimov
Samantha Maragh
Angela Robinson
Jeffrey Shainline
Justyna Zwolak
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Jason Dunion
Ryan Freedman
Andrew Hein
Nadir Jeevanjee
Lauren Rogers
Laura Slivinski
Elizabeth Thompson
Tiffany Viehman
National Science Foundation

Damena Agonafer
William Anderegg
Matthew Anderson
Amirhossein Arzani
Elizabeth (Libby) Barnes
Catherine Berdanier
Marie Berry
Gurtina Besla
Antia Botana
Katherine Bouman
Barry Bradlyn
Emily Breza
Liheng Cai
Agostino Capponi
Michael Carbin
Coleen Carrigan
Laura Chomiuk
Steven Crossley
Ismaila Dabo
Hannah Dailey
Amy Dapper
Christina Delimitrou
Ying Diao
Franklin Dollar
Remy Dou
Alison Dunn
Eno Ebong
Jean Fan
Brittany Fasy
Mark Finlayson
Robert Gilliard, Jr.
Nuno Gomes Loureiro
Osvaldo Gutierrez
James Hambleton
Paul Harnik
Kelsey Hatzell
Josiah Hester
Naruki Hiranuma
Guosong Hong
Nicholas Hutzler
Mihaela Ifrim
Daniel Jacobs
Karin Jensen
Guillermo Juan Araya
Zak Kassas
Aleksandra Korolova
Danai Koutra
Oluwasanmi Koyejo
Heather Kulik
Duygu Kuzum
Gibum Kwon
Matthew Lakin
Claire Le Goues
Saniya LeBlanc
Walter Lee
Frank Leibfarth
Sergey Levine
Wen Li
Noa Lincoln
Elise Lockwood
Margarita Lopez-Uribe
Fantasy Lozada
Allyson Mackey
Raffaella Margutti
Eileen Martin
Joel Mejia
Sonya Neal
Maital Neta
Sharon Neufeldt
Tran Nguyen
Lauren O’Connell
Grace O’Connell
Gavin Price
David Purpura
Sally Pusede
Aaditya Ramdas
Amanda Randles
Parisa Rashidi
Diego Riveros-Iregui
Ellen Roche
Tania Roy
Olga Russakovsky
Amir Safavi-Naeini
Michelle Sander
Soumik Sarkar
Dipali Sashital
Laura Schaposnik
Ashley Shade
Zengyi Shao
Aomawa Shields
Barbara Smith
Kevin Solomon
Edgar Solomonik
Bhuvana Srinivasan
Kate Starbird
Julia Stoyanovich
Ryan Stutsman
Vanessa Svihla
Amanda Thomas
Zhiting Tian
Steven Townsend
Ya Wang
Jill Wegrzyn
Andrew Wetzel
Bobby Wilson
Melanie Wood
Mary Wootters
Rachel Wu
Jie Yin
Chiu-Tien (Tien -Tien) Yu
Arash Zaghi
Office of Naval Research

Elaheh Ahmadi
Tamara Broderick
Chelsea Finn
Xiaodan Gu
Mikhail Kats
Jarad Mason
Smithsonian Institute

Cecilia Garraffo
Michael Johnson
Andrea Quattrini
Sabrina Sholts
Agriculture Research Service

Amanda Ashworth
William Hart-Cooper
Amanda Hulse-Kemp
Sheri Spiegal
Forest Service

Kathryn Baer
Sean Cahoon
Lauren Pile Knapp
National Institute of Food and Agriculture

Tashara Leak
Emily Miller-Cushon
Margaret Worthington
United States Geological Survey

Kate Allstadt
Alison Appling
Johanna Blake
Hannah Dietterich
Richard Erickson
Katherine French
Amy Gartman
Harrison Gray
Alexandra Hatem
Benjamin Mirus
Erin Wirth Moriarty
William Yeck
Jacob Zwart
Department of Veterans Affairs

Lewei Lin
Abidemi Ajiboye
Amy Bohnert
Umamaheswar Duvvuri
Scott Hummel
Paul King
Justine Lee
Miranda Lim
Steve Majerus
Christopher Miller
Amanda Raines
Eric Tkaczyk
Jason Vassy
Aliza Wingo