Young scientist prize names first all-women group

For the first time in its 13-year history, all three winners of the national Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists are women. The prize, which is given out by the New York Academy of Sciences, honors young scientific research faculty with an unrestricted $250,000 prize. This year’s winners were selected from a pool of nearly 350 nominees who are 42 and younger: physicist Ana Maria Ray; Antarctic field biologist Heather Lynch; and Harvard chemical biologist Emily Balskus, who is working on better understanding metabolites in the human microbiome and how they impact health. The winners will be recognized at a September ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.