Three BU Researchers Win National Honor for Early-Career Scientists and Engineers
White House’s presidential award recognizes BU researchers studying special education, lasers, and genes and DNA

BU researchers (from left) Elizabeth Bettini, Zeba Wunderlich, and Michelle Sander were each given a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers at the close of President Joe Biden’s White House tenure. Photos courtesy of Bettini, Wunderlich, and Sander
Three BU Researchers Win National Honor for Early-Career Scientists and Engineers
White House’s presidential award recognizes BU researchers studying special education, lasers, and genes and DNA
It’s one of the highest honors the United States government can bestow on scientists and engineers—and now it’s been conferred on three Boston University researchers: Elizabeth Bettini, Michelle Sander, and Zeba Wunderlich. They’ve each received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for work spanning special education, lasers, and genes and DNA.
According to the BU Office of the Provost, there have been just eight previous BU presidential award winners since the accolade was founded by former President Bill Clinton nearly 30 years ago. Jason L. Vassy, a BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine adjunct assistant professor of medicine and full-time faculty member at Harvard University, was also among the 2025 winners.
The latest awards were confirmed by former President Joe Biden at the end of his tenure in the Oval Office, with a White House statement noting those honored “show exceptional potential for leadership early in their research careers.” The awards were made just weeks before the Trump administration issued a series of executive orders and memos relating to research, including one pausing grant funding that sparked “widespread confusion” in the research community before being rescinded. All awardees have received federal funding and were nominated by the agencies supporting their research.
“It is an enormous honor to be part of this fantastic group of scientists and engineers, and I am quite humbled by the recognition,” says Wunderlich, a BU College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of biology. “It’s a great privilege to be able to carry out research on the topics I find exciting while training the next generation of scientists in the lab and classroom.”
The director of BU’s graduate program in molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry, Wunderlich studies how gene activation is encoded in DNA and what that means for cell development and immune response. Much of her work is done in fruit flies, which she says provide a great model for studying how genes turn on and off. She hopes her research will lead to new insights into the origins of genetic diseases.
“The ultimate goal of our research, which is one shared by many in the field, is to be able to better read parts of the genome that are less well understood,” says Wunderlich, who’s also affiliated with the BU Biological Design Center. “Being able to predict why certain mutations or variations in DNA lead to differences between individuals or developmental disease will allow us to understand better how DNA, composed of just four ‘letters,’ encodes the incredible complexity of the whole organism.”
Like Wunderlich, Bettini says the presidential award is a big honor—and that she was “stunned to have my work recognized in this way.” An expert on special education, she studies issues related to the special education teacher workforce, particularly how to strengthen their support systems. Current projects include developing tools and interventions to evaluate and improve working conditions for teachers.
“I try to understand why there are substantial and persistent inequities in students’ access to skilled, well-supported teachers, based on students’ disability, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status,” says Bettini, a BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development associate professor of special education. “I also aim to understand potential policy and practice solutions to eliminate those inequities over time.”
Her goal, she says, is helping educators “better serve their students and sustain themselves in the profession for the long term.”
Sander is the third BU engineer to be given the award. A BU College of Engineering associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, she develops ultrafast lasers and optical imaging systems, and then studies their potential applications—from taking snapshots of the brain to examining nerve cells to modulating neural signals. Some of the lasers are so fast, they can’t even be measured in standard units of time.
“We develop novel lasers with ultrashort pulses of tens to hundreds of femtosecond duration,” says Sander. “One can think of these pulses as bursts of light like in a camera flash, except much faster, since a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second.”
As head of the BU Ultrafast Optics Laboratory and a member of the University’s centers for photonics and for neurophotonics, Sander says her aim is to design photothermal imaging systems that go “beyond commercially available state-of-the-art technology toward super-resolution.” And she hopes that her efforts can be applied to “fuel new discoveries in many fields, from looking at cells and tissues for human health, to studying materials or contamination monitoring. We are excited to use our optical systems to tackle a variety of scientific challenges across interdisciplinary areas.”
In addition to expressing their surprise and joy at being recognized, all three BU winners stressed that it takes a village: their research is only possible with the help of colleagues and students at the University and beyond.
“Although these are awarded to individuals, research is a large team effort,” says Bettini, “and I hope folks who see this know that this award recognizes all of the incredible colleagues with whom we are honored to collaborate here at BU and around the country.”
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