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At a time when the Obama administration is rewarding efforts to improve math and science instruction, seven city math and science teachers are being lauded for the work they already do.

For the third straight year, the Fund for the City of New York and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation are giving city teachers awards for excellence in teaching science and mathematics. The teachers will receive their prizes — $5,000 each — at an award ceremony tonight and their schools will celebrate the awards, and the $2,500 that their math and science programs receive, at a series of assemblies tomorrow.

The teachers were nominated by students, parents, colleagues, and administrators and then selected by a committee made up of representatives from local science museums and universities, based on their students’ achievement, their involvement in extracurricular activities, and their efforts to promote math and science inside and outside the classroom. The recipients’ high schools range from the city’s highest-performing to some of the weakest, including one that the city is trying to turn around using federal funding.

Here are this year’s recipients, along with a highlight about each that we pulled from longer biographies compiled by the Sloan Awards:

Teacher: Kate Belin
School: Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School
Subject: Geometry, Functions
Why her school thinks she’s great: Belin makes math relevant and interesting for students at Fannie Lou Hamer, where 90 percent of entering freshman are below grade level in math or English, by connecting math to the world outside the classroom.

Teacher: Marissa Bellino
School: High School for Environmental Studies
Subject: Environment Seminar, Global Environment, Environmental Science Research
Why her school thinks she’s great: Bellino has stretched the already strong science program at the High School for Environmental Studies by facilitating a revamp of her school’s science facility and arranging trips for her students to visit Japan to discuss cutting carbon emissions.

Teacher: Jim Cocoros
School: Stuyvesant High School
Subject: Honors Pre-Calculus, Calculus BC, Math Team
Why his school thinks he’s great: The sole male recipient this year, Cocoros is known as a dedicated teacher who makes every effort to tailor instruction to students’ needs and goals.

Teacher: Margaret DeSimone
School: Midwood High School
Subject: Living Environment (and Lab), Anatomy and Physiology
Why her school thinks she’s great: DeSimone’s former students and colleagues say that she is a master at being able to reach all of her students and converting even the most uninterested students to engage with science.

Teacher: Maria Cheryl Diangco
School: Sheepshead Bay High School
Subject: AP Biology, Science Research
Why her school thinks she’s great: Diangco has helped create a reinvigorated science program at Sheepshead Bay, which began undergoing federally funded “restart” this year, and she developed a science research program at the school.

Teacher: Alia Jackson
School: Curtis High School
Subject:Physics (including IB Physics), Earth Science
Why her school thinks she’s great: Jackson has infused her physics course with fun trips (to Six Flags) and fun projects (rubber band-powered cars, water-powered rockets), and she’s gotten some fun outcomes: Her students have a near-perfect pass rate on the Physics Regents.

Teacher: Eliza Kuberska
School: Hunter College High School
Subject: Algebra II/Geometry, AP Statistics, Problem Solving
Why her school thinks she’s great: Even in a school with a 99 percent graduation rate, where many graduates go on to Ivy League colleges, Kuberska manages to challenge her students with complex problem sets and to pique their intellectual curiosity.