A six-member faculty committee chaired by Vice Provost Nicholas P. Jewell selected the outstanding proposals from a field of 41.

This year's awards, totaling $242,400, ranged in size from $2,500 to $31,000. Award recipients, their fields of study and the titles of their proposed research follow.

Tracy Handel, molecular and cell biology, "De Novo Design of Membrane Proteins."

Alan Sachs, molecular and cell biology, "Functional Interactions Between Messenger RNA 5' and 3' Ends." Roya Maboudian, chemical engineering, "Understanding and Manipulating Surface Forces in Silicon Micro-Mechanical Devices."

Yeon-Kyun Shin, chemistry, "Mechanism of Cell-Viral Membrane Fusion Induced by HIV gp120-gp41." David Sedlak, civil and environmental engineering, "The Use of Photochemical Reactions in the Treatment of Metal-Cyanide Containing Hazardous Waste."

David Weiss, physics, "Experiments with Cold Trapped Atoms."

Mark Van der Laan, biostatistics, "Optimal Methods for Estimation of Survival Distributions with Censored Data and Many Covariates Martin Jones, philosophy, "Metaphysics and Quantum Theory." Paolo Mancosu, philosophy, "From Brouwer to Hilbert: Philosophy of Mathematics in the 1920s." Katherine Snyder, English, "Bachelors, Narrative, and the Novel."

Nada Eissa, economics, "The Econometrics of Differences-in-Differences Regression Models." Mariane Ferme, anthropology, "State Failures and 'Moral' Reforms in Sierra Leone: A Historical and Cultural Study."

Carol Redmount, Near Eastern studies, "Of Silts and Marls: Analysis of Modern Egyptian Pottery and Implications for Ancient Egyptian Ceramics."