University of Georgia Skidaway Institute of Oceanography scientist Julia Diaz has been awarded a prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship. Diaz is joined by 125 other 2018 Sloan Fellows from across the U.S. and Canada.

Julia Diaz

Presented by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the fellowship is awarded to early-career scholars representing the most promising scientific researchers working in the fields of chemistry, computational or evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, ocean sciences, physics or a related field. Since 1955, Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win 45 Nobel Prizes.

Diaz will receive $65,000, which may be spent on any expense supportive of her research, which is focused on how the chemistry and microbiology of the oceans shape each other and ultimately how this interaction affects ecosystem health from local to global scales.

Diaz graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Science in biology and went on to earn her doctorate in earth and atmospheric sciences from Georgia Tech. She conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.