Presidential Young Investigator Award


The Presidential Young Investigator Award '' was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator Awards and Presidential Faculty Fellows program. In 1995, the NSF Young Investigator program was subsumed into the NSF CAREER Awards program, and in 1996, the Presidential Faculty Fellows program was replaced by the PECASE program.
Applicants could not directly apply for the award, but were nominated by others including their own institutions based on their previous record of scientific achievement. The award, a certificate from the White House signed by the President of the United States, included a minimum grant of $25,000 a year for five years from NSF to be used for any scientific research project the awardee wished to pursue, with the possibility of additional funding up to $100,000 annually if the PYI obtained matching funds from industry. Considered to be one of the highest honors granted by the National Science Foundation, the award program was criticized in 1990 as not being the best use of NSF funds in an era of tight budgets.
Frances Arnold, winner of this award in 1989, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018.

Recipients

PYI award recipients include:

NSF Young Investigator Program

In 1991, the NSF renamed the Presidential Young Investigator Program as the NSF Young Investigator Program, to reflect more accurately the level of prestige of the award—the term "Presidential" should be reserved for awards more prestigious.

NSF Young Investigator recipients

NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship

The NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship program was launched by President George H.W. Bush to honor 30 young engineering and science professors. The awards were up to $100,000 per year for 5 years.

PFF recipients

Here are some recipients of the Presidential Faculty Fellowship.