Careers Q&A

Mara Mather, associate professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has received the American Psychological Association's award for early-career contributions.

Lidia Brito, Mozambique's former science minister, now heads the science-policy division at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris.

In January, Zhenrong Zhang obtained her first faculty position as an assistant professor, at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She will set up Baylor's first scanning tunnelling microscopy lab.

Former astronaut John Grunsfeld is the latest deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and will oversee the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

The former director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, Eric Barron is the new president of Florida State University in Tallahassee.

Chemist Richard Zare is winner of the 2010 Priestley Medal and the 2009 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring.

Jon Gluyas of Durham University, UK, is the country's first professor of carbon capture and storage and geoenergy.

Martin Cole takes over as chief of food and nutritional sciences at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia in January 2010.

Jorge Gardea-Torresdey of the University of Texas-El Paso received the 2009 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans.

Next February, Richard Olds will begin his tenure as dean of the planned new medical school at the University of California, Riverside. The school is due to open in 2012.

Based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Widnall is the winner of the Arthur M. Bueche Award for expanding opportunities for women and minorities in engineering.

An ecologist at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, Anderson has won the first annual ProSPER.NET-Scopus Young Scientist award for agriculture and natural resources.

A particle physicist at the University of Manchester, UK, Söldner-Rembold is the latest spokesperson elected to co-coordinate the D0 experiment, an exploration of the subatomic universe that started in 1992 at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

A chemist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Matyjaszewski is the winner of this year's Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge academic award.

An expert in the molecular mechanisms of taste, Margolskee recently accepted a faculty position at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

First director of the Centre for Systems Biology in Luxembourg.

Incoming director of the National Laboratory in Gran Sasso, Italy.

Inaugural chief of the Division of Biomedical Informatics at the University of California, San Diego.

Incoming member of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) in London

Founding director of the new German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Bonn, Germany.