Isaac Mooney, Yale Physics and Brookhaven National Laboratory postdoctoral associate, and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab, was one of four postdocs to receive the 2024 Office of the Provost and Yale Postdoctoral Association’s Yale Mentoring Award for postdoctoral scholars. This award recognizes postdoctoral scholars who exemplify the role of a mentor to their undergraduate students or postgraduates. The winner of the prize is chosen based on recommendations from mentees.
Part of the citation from his nomination reads: “[During our weekly meetings] I feel that he is guiding me to state the goals that I want to reach for myself, rather than how he sees my research continuing. I feel comfortable to ask him the “dumb” questions without fear of a negative reaction. He always gives me explicit and enthusiastic credit for things I came up with in our meetings that ends up with outside uses. [He] provides honest and direct feedback, letting me know when he disagrees with a decision or conclusion, while coming at it from an angle of trying to understand my thoughts rather than correcting them.”
Helen Caines, Horace D. Taft Professor of Physics and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab, said, “I totally agree with these statements. He is doing a great job helping mentor both undergraduates and graduates in our group, performing well beyond our expectations.”
This story was taken from the Wright Lab news story of August 9, 2024, by Victoria Misenti