Five Indian Americans are among 126 early-career researchers selected to receive a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2025. Awarded annually since 1955, the fellowships honor exceptional researchers at US and Canadian educational institutions, whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders.
“The Sloan Research Fellows represent the very best of early-career science, embodying the creativity, ambition, and rigor that drive discovery forward,” says Adam F. Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “These extraordinary scholars are already making significant contributions, and we are confident they will shape the future of their fields in remarkable ways.”
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Five Indian American recipients are: Himabindu Lakkaraju, Harvard University, Deepak Pathak, Carnegie Mellon University; Vikram Gadagkar, Columbia University, Malavika Murugan, Emory University and Shreya Saxena, Yale University.
Himabindu Lakkaraju is an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate in Computer Science at Harvard. She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. from Stanford University, specializing in AI, machine learning, and their real-world applications.
Deepak Pathak is the Raj Reddy assistant professor in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He studied at IIT Kanpur and UC Berkeley, specializing in artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, and robotics, with a focus on autonomous agents and self-supervised learning.
Vikram Gadagkar is an assistant professor of neuroscience at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute. He studied at Bangalore University, IISc, and Cornell University, researching neural mechanisms underlying learning, decision-making, and adaptive behavior using computational and experimental neuroscienceapproaches.
Malavika Murugan is an assistant professor of biology at Emory University. She earned her B.Tech. from Vellore Institute of Technology and Ph.D. from Duke University. Her research focuses on neural mechanisms of social recognition using imaging, electrophysiology, and optogenetics.
Shreya Saxena is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Yale and a core member of the Wu Tsai Institute. She studied at EPFL, Johns Hopkins, and MIT, focusing on neural control, coordinated behavior, and closed-loop motor control using computational neuroscience.
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The list also includes an Indian Canadian, Bhavin J. Shastri, Queen’s University. He is an assistant professor of engineering physics and a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute for AI. He earned his Ph.D. from McGill University, specializing in neuromorphic photonics, quantum machine learning, and integrated photonic systems.
Winners receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship which can be used flexibly to advance the Fellow’s research.
Nominations for the 2026 Sloan Research Fellowships will open on July 15, 2026.