NEWS INDEX 2000 November

Feng Sheng Hu named Packard Fellow in Science and Engineering

Jim Barlow, Life Sciences Editor
(217) 333-5802; b-james3@uiuc.edu

Feng Sheng Hu, a professor of plant biology and of geology at the University of Illinois, is among 24 U.S. researchers named as 2000 Packard Fellows in science and engineering by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Hu, 36, joined the UI faculty in 1998. He is a systems ecologist who studies how ecosystems and biogeochemical processes are affected by global change. His research often simultaneously involves overlapping issues in biology, geology and climatology. He will receive $625,000 over five years for his work.

Hu earned his doctorate in ecosystem science in 1994 from the University of Washington in Seattle, a master's degree in botany in 1990 from the University of Maine in Orono and a bachelor's degree in biology in 1983 from Xiamen University in China. Hu is the ninth UI scientist to be named a Packard Fellow since the fellowship program began in 1988. Each year, new fellows are chosen from nominations submitted by the presidents of 50 universities.

The Packard Foundation, founded in 1964 and based in Los Altos, Calif., provides funding to early career scientists with very few restrictions in the hopes that they will continue their careers in academia, doing both basic research and teaching a new generation of researchers.