DAVIS - Two scientists at the University of California, Davis, have won $40,000 fellowships to conduct research on how connections form between nerve cells, university officials announced Tuesday.

Hwai-Jong Cheng, an assistant professor at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience, and Elva Diaz, a pharmacologist and toxicologist who is also affiliated with the center, are among 116 scientists across the nation who have been selected to receive the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.

The fellowships are awarded to scientists in physics, chemistry, mathematics, molecular biology neuroscience, economics or computer science. Since the fellowship program began in 1955, 28 Sloan fellows have later won Nobel prizes.

Both winners are new to UC Davis. Cheng joined in October 2002; Diaz arrived in July.