December 21, 2020
Four postdocs, Michel Fruchart, Hairong Lyu, Jun Nishida, and Anees Palapuravan, have been named recipients of the 2020-2021 Suzuki Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. Yuji Suzuki, SM’70, a longtime supporter and former Council member of the Physical Sciences Division, established the Yuji and Lorraine Suzuki Postdoctoral Research Fund in 2016 to recognize outstanding postdoctoral researchers. The award provides a salary top-off.
Michel Fruchart joined the University of Chicago as a Kadanoff-Rice postdoctoral fellow in the James Franck Institute in 2018. Previously, Fruchart served as a postdoctoral fellow at Leiden University and Delft University of Technology. He earned his PhD in physics from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. Fruchart works in Prof. Vincenzo Vitelli’s group, focusing on theoretical condensed matter physics.
Hairong Lyu joined the University of Chicago as a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Chemistry in 2019. Previously, Lyu served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She earned her PhD in chemistry from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2018. Lyu works in the lab of Prof. Guangbin Dong, conducting research on organic synthesis, transition metal catalysis, boron chemistry, B-H and C-H activation.
Jun Nishida joined the University of Chicago in 2019 as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Computer Science. Nishida earned a PhD in human informatics from the University of Tsukuba, Japan. Nishida works with Prof. Pedro Lopes in the Human Computer Integration Lab, focusing on the development of wearable devices that change people’s perspectives and are used for rehabilitation, education, and design.
Anees Palapuravan joined the University of Chicago in 2019 as a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Chemistry and the Grossman Institute for Neuroscience, Quantitative Biology, and Human Behavior. Previously, Palapuravan served as a postdoctoral and FRQS research scholar at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), EMT Research Center, Varennes (Quebec), Canada. He earned a PhD in chemistry from the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), NIIST-CSIR, Trivandrum, India. Palapuravan works in the lab of Prof. Yamuna Krishnan and focuses on developing new chemical tools for the identification of unknown ion channels and transporters and studying their function in health and disease.