Anastasia Ailamaki, associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, is one of 20 scientists chosen for this year's European Young Investigator Awards, CMU announced today.

The awards program is "designed to attract outstanding young scientists from around the world to create their own research teams at European research centers," according to a news release.

The recipients will be honored at a ceremony Thursday in Helsinki, Finland.

Dr. Ailamaki, a native of Crete in Greece, joined Carnegie Mellon's Computer Science Department in 2001. She will receive about $1.4 million to establish a research team in Switzerland, where she has been a visiting professor since February. Her research focuses on database systems, and she is particularly interested in addressing the peculiar problems of large, scientific databases, such as those used for earthquake or astrophysics simulations.