Michael Rubenstein Receives Sloan Research Fellowship

Rubenstein is among 126 outstanding early-career scholars recognized this year

Michael Rubenstein

Northwestern Engineering’s Michael Rubenstein has been awarded a prestigious 2017 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

He is among 126 outstanding early-career scholars being recognized for their achievements and potential to contribute substantially to their scientific fields. This year’s recipients were chosen from 60 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Mathematicians Gang Liu and Yifeng Liu and neuroscientist Tiffany Schmidt — all from Northwestern University — also received a 2017 fellowship. 

The $60,000 fellowships are awarded in the fields of chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences and physics.

“The Sloan Research Fellows are the rising stars of the academic community,” said Paul L. Joskow, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “Through their achievements and ambition, these young scholars are transforming their fields and opening up entirely new research horizons. We are proud to support them at this crucial stage of their careers.”

Rubenstein was selected as a Sloan Research Fellow in computer science. He is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and of electrical engineering and computer science in the McCormick School of Engineering. His research interest is to advance the control and design of multi-robot systems, both to enable their use instead of traditional single robots and to solve problems for which traditional robots are not suitable. Rubenstein investigates how these multi-robot systems can offer more parallelism, adaptability and fault tolerance when compared to a traditional single robot. In addition, he is also interested in investigating how new technologies will allow for more capable multi-robot systems.

The Sloan Research Fellowships have been awarded annually since 1955. Administered and funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the fellowships are awarded in close cooperation with the scientific community. Potential fellows must be nominated for recognition by their peers and subsequently are selected by an independent panel of senior scholars.

McCormick News Article