UC San Diego: Three UC San Diego Faculty Members Receive 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship

Three researchers at the University of California San Diego are part of the 2022 class of 118 Sloan Research Fellows, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced Feb. 15, 2022.

They are Matthew Lovett-Barron, an assistant professor in the Section of Neurobiology, Frederick R. W. M. Manners, an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics, and Deian Stefan, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

The Sloan Research Fellowships are one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early career researchers. The fellowships honor extraordinary U.S. and Canadian researchers whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders.


Matthew Lovett-Barron, an assistant professor in the Section of Neurobiology, Division of Biological Sciences, received his PhD in Neurobiology from Columbia University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. His interests include studying animals that live and move as cooperative groups. His lab uses virtual reality and neural activity imaging tools to study the brains and behaviors of schooling fish to understand how collective behavior arises from the interdependent decisions of individuals.

Frederick Manners, assistant professor of Mathematics, received his D.Phil in Mathematics from the University of Oxford. Before coming to UC San Diego, he was the Szego Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University. Manners studies additive combinatorics, with a particular focus on finding and applying “structure vs. quasi-randomness” dichotomies in different arithmetic and combinatorial settings. His work also includes number theory, analysis and probability, and aspects of theoretical computer science.


Deian Stefan, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, received his Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford. His research interests span security, programming languages and systems. Recently, his work with collaborators has led to the development of tools to make web browsers safer, including technology that is part of the newest Firefox release.

In all, 143 faculty at the University of California San Diego have received a Sloan Research Fellowship since they were awarded first in 1955.