UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Tushar Mittal, assistant professor of geosciences in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) at Penn State, was named a 2024 Packard Fellow by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Mittal is among this year’s class that features 20 innovative early-career scientists and engineers, each of whom will receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research.
“These scientists and engineers are the architects of tomorrow, leading innovation with bold ideas and unyielding determination,” said Nancy Lindborg, president and chief executive officer of the Packard Foundation. “Their work today will be the foundation for the breakthroughs of the future, inspiring the next wave of discovery and invention.”
Each year, the foundation invites 50 universities to nominate two faculty members for consideration. The Packard Fellowships Advisory Panel, a group of 12 internationally recognized scientists and engineers, evaluates the 100 nominations and recommends fellows for approval by the Packard Foundation Board of Trustees.
“This extraordinary class of fellows joins the community of Packard Fellows who are pushing the boundaries of innovation and discovery to contribute to science and engineering in ways that make a real difference to our world,” said Richard Alley, Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, chair of the Packard Fellowships for Science & Engineering Advisory Panel and 1991 Packard Fellow. “We look forward to welcoming them to the Packard Fellows community and supporting them as they collaborate, learn, and create the future together.”
Mittal joins the ranks of 11 other Packard Fellows from Penn State, including three from the College of Earth and Minerals Sciences: Alley; Susan Brantley, Evan Pugh University Professor and Barnes Professor of Geosciences; and Peter Wilf, professor of geosciences.
“We are fortunate to now have three Packard Fellows in EMS,” said Lee Kump, the John Leone Dean in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. “Dr. Mittal’s focus on volcanic hazards adds an important component to our understanding of natural and anthropogenic hazards and their mitigation for society.”
Volcanoes link the deep Earth and the surface, affecting the environment and endangering millions of people. The Mittal Lab develops innovative tools that combine geophysical fluid dynamics, rock mechanics, remote sensing, and Earth system modeling to improve the detection and understanding of volcanism, especially in submarine settings.
More than two-thirds of the volcanic eruptions on Earth are thought to occur underwater and these submarine eruptions significantly affect ocean ecosystems while posing an acute hazard to hundreds of millions of people living in volcanic tsunami zones. Mittal’s research funded by this fellowship will address the key scientific challenge to understanding submarine volcanism: characterizing underwater eruptions globally by estimating their size, gas and fluid emissions, and spatiotemporal patterns.
Mittal earned his bachelor's degree from John Hopkins University in 2012 and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020. He was a Crosby Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2020 to 2022 before joining Penn State in the fall of 2022.
The Packard Fellowships were inspired by David Packard’s passion for science and engineering and his commitment to strengthening university-based science and engineering programs in the United States. He recognized that the success of the Hewlett-Packard Company, which he co-founded, was derived in large measure from research and development in university laboratories. It was with this spirit that the foundation launched the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering program 36 years ago. Since its inception, the Packard Foundation has awarded nearly $500 million to support 715 scientists and engineers from 55 universities.