Three early-career faculty in the UC Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) – Yuan Cao, Sarah E. Chasins, and John Wright – have been awarded prestigious 2026 Sloan Research Fellowships.
The fellowship is granted annually to “honor exceptional researchers at U.S. and Canadian educational institutions whose creativity, innovation and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders,” according to the Sloan Foundation announcement.
Cao is an assistant professor of EECS whose lab explores the unique electrical properties of ultra-thin, low-dimensional materials like graphene. His work explores how stacking and twisting these atomically thin materials can produce exotic states of matter such as superconductivity. He is best known for pioneering research on magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, which opened a new field in condensed matter physics.v
Chasins is an assistant professor of EECS who works closely with social scientists, scientists, journalists and policymakers to develop new programming tools and languages, with the goal of helping non-traditional programmers apply the latest computer science advances to tackling major scientific and societal problems.
Wright is an assistant professor of EECS. As a theoretical computer scientist with an emphasis in quantum computing, Wright explores the fundamental rules and limitations of quantum computing and develops better ways to understand and test quantum systems.
Sloan Fellows receive a two-year, $75,000 fellowship which can be used flexibly to advance the fellow’s research. This year, UC Berkeley had seven Sloan Fellows.
Read the full announcement
UC Berkeley News: Berkeley faculty named 2026 Sloan Fellows
