# William O. Baker Award for Initiatives in Research

Der William O. Baker Award for Initiatives in Research (bis 2013 NAS Award for Initiatives in Research, National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research) ist ein von der National Academy of Sciences der Vereinigten Staaten seit 1981 jährlich vergebener Wissenschaftspreis, mit dem einerseits innovative junge Wissenschaftler, andererseits Forschung, die wahrscheinlich zu nützlichen Entwicklungen führt, gefördert werden sollen. Der Empfänger muss in den USA leben und soll nicht älter als 35 Jahre sein. Der Preis ist nach William O. Baker benannt und wird von den Bell Labs und Alcatel-Lucent gesponsert. Er ist mit 15.000 US-Dollar dotiert.
Seit 2015 gab es keine neuen Preisträger.

## Preisträger

| Jahr | Preisträger | Gebiet | Begründung |
| 1981 | Gary D. Patterson | Polymer-Wissenschaften | For his outstanding theoretical and experimental contributions to polymer science, particularly in the application of light scattering measurements to the understanding of polymer chain dynamics. |
| 1982 | Kerry E. Sieh | Geochemie/Geophysik | For his development and application of innovative field techniques for studying active faults to identify and date paleoearthquakes, thereby providing quantitative assessment of earthquake hazards. |
| 1983 | Stephen M. Kosslyn | Verhaltensforschung und Sozialwissenschaften | For his development of a comprehensive theory of visual imagery and its representation in the human memory system. |
| 1984 | Robert E. Tarjan | Technische Informatik | For his leadership in the subtle design of the most efficient algorithms known for many fundamental problems related to graphs and other combinatorial structures. |
| 1985 | Steven E. Lindow | angewandte Biologie | For his pioneering research, demonstrating the role of epiphytic bacteria in ice nucleation and resultant frost damage to plants, the feasibility of biological as well as chemical control of frost injury, and the genetic control of ice nucleation in bacteria. |
| 1986 | David R. Nelson | Materialwissenschaften | For his contributions to the understanding of imperfectly ordered systems including hexactics, liquid crystals, glasses, and icosahedral order in liquids. |
| 1987 | Jeremy Nathans | Genetik | For providing molecular genetic proof of the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory of color vision and for defining the changes in DNA in colorblindness. |
| 1988 | Marc L. Mansfield | angewandte Polymerchemie und -physik | For his outstanding theoretical studies of the structure and properties of amorphous and semicrystalline polymers. |
| 1989 | John K. Ousterhout | Ingenieurwesen | For his outstanding achievements in the engineering of software ranging from operating systems to the computer-aided design of VLSI circuits. |
| 1990 | Wayne H. Knox | Quantenelektronik | For his contributions to femtosecond quantum electronics and applications of subpicosecond lasers to study ultrafast processed in molecular systems and semiconductor heterostructures. |
| 1990 | James G. Fujimoto | Quantenelektronik | For his contributions to femtosecond quantum electronics and applications of subpicosecond lasers to studies of electronic materials and biological tissues. |
| 1991 | Noam D. Elkies | Mathematik | For his distinguished research in number theory, particularly his work on elliptic curves over the rational numbers and his remarkable constructions of dense sphere packings in Euclidean space. |
| 1992 | Sangtae Kim | Chemieingenieurwesen | For his refinement of mathematical techniques in low Reynolds number hydrodynamics, and for his development of novel computer strategies for solving complex chemical engineering problems. |
| 1992 | Alice P. Gast | Chemieingenieurwesen | For her innovative experimental and theoretical research of polymer and colloidal systems leading to discoveries of new microscopic phenomena. |
| 1993 | R. Eric Betzig | Physik | For his implementation of a near-field scanning optical microscope, which extends the resolution of optical microscopy far beyond the diffraction limit to dimensions as small as one-fortieth of an optical wave length. |
| 1994 | Joanne Chory | Molekularbiologie der Pflanzen | For her pioneering genetic and molecular approaches that have altered our understanding of how photomorphogenesis in plants is controlled by photoreceptor signal transduction pathways. |
| 1995 | Thomas D. Albright | System-Neurowissenschaften | For his fundamental contributions to the understanding of motion perception through the creative integration of single-unit electrophysiology in monkeys, human psychophysics, and computational modeling. |
| 1996 | Christopher Stubbs | Astrophysik | For his innovative development and utilization of instrumentation to attack fundamental issues in physics and astronomy, including the discovery of baryonic dark matter in the galactic halo. |
| 1997 | Matthew P. A. Fisher | Festkörperphysik | For his seminal contributions to the theory of the vortex-glass phase, the superconductor-insulator transition, and the quantum properties of mesoscopic wires and n-leg Hubbard ladders. |
| 1998 | Arthur W. Lupia | Sozialwissenschaften und Politikwissenschaften | For his contribution to our understanding of the importance of knowledge, learning, and persuasion to political decision-making by voters, legislators, and jurors. |
| 1999 | Jennifer A. Doudna | Biomedizin | For her pioneering studies, which have enabled the determination of complex RNA structures, especially those of ribozymes, through X-ray crystallography. |
| 2000 | Kenneth A. Farley | Geochemie/Geophysik | For his insightful use of isotope geochemistry to address the origin of Earth’s atmosphere, the infall of cosmic dust, and the uplift rates of mountains. |
| 2001 | Jon M. Kleinberg | Informatik/angewandte Mathematik | For his development of deep and innovative algorithms to solve fundamental problems in network, information extraction, and discrete optimization. |
| 2002 | Deborah S. Jin | Quantenelektronik | For her experimental realization and characterization of a new quantum system, the vapor-phase degenerate Fermi gas. |
| 2003 | David R. Karger | Algorithmen und Rechnen | For the elegant use of randomness to design improved algorithms for classically studied problems such as network flow, graph coloring, finding minimum trees, and finding minimum cuts. |
| 2004 | Yoel Fink | Kondensierte Materie/Materialwissenschaften | For his pioneering contributions and ingenuity in the creative design and development of photonic materials and devices. |
| 2005 | Ronald Fedkiw | Informatik/angewandte Mathematik | For his many innovations in the modeling and numerical simulation of flows and his pioneering contributions to physically based computer graphics. |
| 2006 | David Goldhaber-Gordon | Kondensierte Materie/Materialwissenschaften | For his fundamental studies of electron correlations in mesoscopic structures. |
| 2007 | Shanhui Fan | Optik | For innovative research on the theory and applications of photonic crystal devices. |
| 2008 | Anna C. Gilbert | Informatik und angewandte Mathematik | For innovative algorithms using wavelets and sampling techniques and their impact on data analysis and sparse approximation. |
| 2009 | Ali Javey | Nanowissenschaften | For seminal advances in carbon nanoelectronics, utilizing and synthesizing concepts from chemistry, physics, and engineering. |
| 2010 | Mark Tygert | Numerik | For development of fast algorithms in mathematical physics, operator compression, and linear algebra, using deep, innovative ideas based on randomization and harmonic analysis. |
| 2011 | Martin T. Zanni | Optik | For revolutionary advances in multidimensional spectroscopies, which are enabling discoveries in biological, medical, and condensed matter chemical systems. |
| 2012 | Christopher Bettinger | Materialwissenschaften | For innovative research on advanced materials for next-generation implanted medical devices. |
| 2013 | Theodore Betley | Katalyse | For his development and mechanistic elucidation of remarkable iron catalysts for carbon-hydrogen bond functionalization. |
| 2014 | Garnet Kin-Lic Chan | numerische Simulationen kondensierter Materie | For pioneering research in the field of numerical simulation of highly correlated quantum systems in chemistry and physics, particularly for his development of density matrix renormalization group methods and the density matrix embedding theory. |
| 2015 | Benjamin Recht | Statistik und Maschinenlernen | For his significant contributions at the confluence of optimization, signal processing and statistics, including seminal work on matrix completion. |