Coleen Carrigan and Liheng Cai have been named Copenhaver Fellows at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science. The school awards the fellowships to associate professors for research excellence.
The fellows receive annually a $5,000 salary bonus and $5,000 in discretionary funds to advance their research programs. The fellowships are for three years or until the school promotes the faculty member to full professor. There are six active Copenhaver Fellows each year.
This is a School of Engineering program funded by a gift to the school.
High-Quality, Impactful Research
Carrigan is an associate professor of science, technology and society in the Department of Engineering and Society. Her lab explores the cultures of different subfields in engineering and computer science.
She recently published a book, “Cracking the Bro Code,” which was one of the first academic books to explore sexism and racism in tech.
Cai is an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Chemical Engineering.
His Soft Biomatter Lab unearthed foundational knowledge for using bottlebrush polymers as a new class of building blocks to independently encode physical, chemical and biochemical complexities into soft biomaterials.
Other Career Awards
Carrigan and Cai also received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in January. In addition, both are National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipients.