50 Finalists Announced for Hertz Foundation Fellowship

Livermore, CA (PRWEB) February 11, 2015

Today, the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation announced finalists for the 2015 class of Hertz Fellows. The Foundation was created by entrepreneur John Hertz to inspire and invest in the future of scientific exploration by providing resources and academic freedom to young minds. The Foundation funds graduate education for leaders in the fields of applied physical, biological and engineering sciences and encourages its awardees to pursue science for the public good.

These 50 students are smart, creative and innovative, said Jay Davis, PhD, Hertz Foundation President. They rose to the top in a pool of 800 applicants and no doubt will use their time in graduate school to pursue groundbreaking scientific discoveries. While we will choose only a select few for the Hertz Fellowship, each of these finalists is worthy of acclaim.

Each Fellowship consists of up to 5 years of academic fiscal support valued at $250,000 and research freedom at a participating graduate institution in the United States. Finalists represent many of the top public and private universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Princeton University, Columbia University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Finalists will now participate in an in-depth interview and technical review process. The Fellows will be selected based on their vision, intensity, and the opportunities they see for the future of their work.

Students pursue the Hertz Fellowship due to the academic freedom it affords, added Davis. Hertz Fellows look for ways to collaborate across disciplines and departments to have exponential impact on their field of study and beyond, he concluded.

Alumni of the Hertz Fellowship include two Nobel Laureates, a Fields Medal Recipient, and a National Science Medal Recipient. Fellows have also gone on to found more than 200 companies, register 3,000 patents, head major universities, lead in key positions at National Laboratories, and hold senior positions in the United States military.

Ed Boyden, an Associate Professor at the MIT Media Lab and a 1999 Hertz Fellow offered his perspective on the benefit of this Fellowship saying, The Hertz fellowship gave me the freedom, when I was a PhD student, to fuse together different disciplines and help drive the new field of neuroengineering, which yielded optogenetic tools that are used throughout the field of neuroscience.

2015 Hertz Fellowship Finalists

Amol Aggarwal, Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mihir Bhaskar, Physics, Columbia University Katie Bodner, Bioengineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Jonathan Chen, Chemical Biology, Princeton University Sway Chen, Biology, Columbia University Bridget Connor, Chemistry, California Institute of Technology John Cooper, Neuroscience, Northwestern University Jordan Cotler, Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Christopher Douglas, Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology Kayla (Felger) Wolf, Bioengineering, University of California-Berkeley Andrew Fillingim, Electrical Engineering, Texas Tech University Zachary Funke, Aerospace Engineering, United States Air Force Academy Alexandre Gauthier, Applied Physics, University of Pittsburgh Cole Graham, Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Gabriella Heller, Biophysics, University of Cambridge, UK Adam Jermyn, Physics, California Institute of Technology Emma Kast, Geosciences, Princeton University Samuel Kazer, Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Fiona Kearns, Chemistry, University of South Florida Jesse Kirkpatrick, Biomedical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Andrea Kriz, Bio and Biomedical Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ernest Lee, Bioengineering, University of California-Los Angeles Allen Lin, Systems Biology, Harvard University William Lindemann, Materials Science, Iowa State University Stephen Linderman, Biomedical Engineering, Washington University Benjamin Mildenhall, Computer Science, Stanford University Andrew Milewski, Biophysics/Bio-Engineering/Quant. Biology, Cornell University Timothy Moon, Applied Mathematics, Stanford University Daniel Mossing, Applied Physics, Princeton University Jelena Notaros, Electrical Engineering, University of Colorado-Boulder Sabrina Pasterski, Physics, Harvard University Eliad Peretz, Materials Science & Mechanical Engineering, Technion Israel Ins Of Tech Melinda Perkins, Engineering, Stanford University Abigail Plummer, Physics, Brown University Maxim Rabinovich, Computer Science, University of California-Berkeley Philip Saad, Physics, University of California-Santa Barbara Adrian Sanborn, Computer Science, Stanford University Ben Shababo, Neuroscience and Applied Statistics, University of California-Berkeley Ravi Sheth, Bioengineering, Rice University Alexander Siegenfeld, Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sandya Subramanian, Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University Hursh Sureka, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology Jason Szafron, Engineering, Texas A&M - College Station Alexander Tarashansky, Bio-Engineering, University of Southern California Leonid Timashev, Molecular & Cellular Biology, Rockefeller University Charles Tschirhart, Experimental Physics, California Institute of Technology Aaron Wienkers, Computational Science and Engineering, University of California-Berkeley Jacob Witten, Computer & Systems Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Katherine Xue, Genome Sciences, University of Washington Seattle Allen Yuan, Mathematics, Harvard University

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50 Finalists Announced for Hertz Foundation Fellowship