Two University of California, Davis, faculty researchers have been honored nationally by receiving Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships this year. Jeremy Quastel, assistant professor of mathematics, and Gregg Recanzone, assistant professor of neuroscience, were awarded the two-year, $35,000 awards in support of outstanding researchers early in their academic careers. The fellowship program grants 100 awards annually in six fields -- chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. It began in 1955 as a means of encouraging research by young scholars at a critical time in their careers when other support is difficult to obtain. Nineteen past Sloan Fellows have won Nobel Prizes, including two Nobel Laureates in 1995. Quastel, 32, joined the UC Davis mathematics department in 1991. He is studying the problem of how to derive in a mathematical way the equations describing the macroscopic world around us from the chaotic, molecular behavior one might see in a microscope. For example, simplified models for molecular dynamics can provide a foundation for turbulent solutions of the equations of fluid dynamics, which are poorly understood yet fundamental to a wide range of problems in engineering, atmospheric science and other fields. Since 1994, Recanzone, 33, has been a member of the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and of the neurobiology, physiology and behavior section of the biological sciences division. As a graduate student at UC San Francisco and a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, Recanzone became proficient in single-unit neuron recording techniques, which have been a fruitful approach to understanding primate visual systems. He is currently applying these techniques to the auditory system in order to elucidate the mechanisms of recovery of function after strokes, as well as the alterations that the brain undergoes during learning and skill acquisition.