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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Angelicque "Angel" White, an oceanographer from Oregon State University, has received a 2012 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Fellowships were awarded to 126 top young researchers in the United States and Canada. Awarded annually since 1955, the fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars identified as rising stars and the next generation of scientific leaders.

"Today's Sloan Research Fellows are tomorrow's Nobel Prize winners, said Paul L. Joskow, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Sloan Fellowships historically have been awarded in seven fields, including chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, evolutionary and computational molecular biology, neuroscience, and physics. This year, the foundation expanded to include ocean sciences and awarded eight fellowships in that field, including the one to White.

White is an assistant professor in OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences whose work focuses on ocean productivity and phytoplankton physiology. She is a member of the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE), and has been active in a collaborative project to monitor harmful algal blooms off the Oregon coast.

She also has studied the Pacific Ocean "garbage patch," a huge collection of plastic trapped in a gyre off the West Coast, which she has described as problematic, but exaggerated in scale in many media reports.

Sloan Fellowships provide $50,000 over two years for equipment, technical assistance, professional travel, trainee support and other activities supporting the fellow's research.

A list of the 2012 recipients is available at: www.sloan.org/fellowships/page/21