Hertz Foundation
Encyclopedia
The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation is an American non-profit organization
that awards fellowship
s to Ph.D.
students in the applied physical, biological and engineering sciences. It is considered to be the most competitive and prestigious graduate fellowship in science and engineering. The fellowship provides $250,000 of support over five years. The goal is for Fellows to be financially independent and free from traditional restrictions of their academic departments in order to promote innovation in collaboration with leading professors in the field. Through a rigorous application and interview process, the Hertz Foundation seeks to identify young scientists and engineers with the potential to change the world for the better and supports their research endeavors from an early stage. Fellowship recipients pledge to make their skills available to the United States in times of national emergency.
, was a European emigrant whose family arrived in the United States with few resources, when the boy was five years old. Hertz matured into a prominent entrepreneur and business leader as the automotive age burgeoned in Chicago, Illinois. Initially, the Foundation granted undergraduate scholarships to qualified and financially-limited mechanical and electrical engineering students. In 1963, the undergraduate scholarship program was phased out and replaced with postgraduate fellowships leading to the award of the Ph.D. The scope of the studies supported by Fellowships was also enlarged to include applied sciences and engineering. Recipients of the Hertz Fellowship typically attend competitive graduate schools such as Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Princeton University
, and UC Berkeley. In 2008, 16 Fellows were named with fellowships of approximately $250,000 apiece from over 600 applicants.
The application period opens on 1 September, when electronic applications are made available by the Hertz Foundation. All Fellowship applicants are notified by mail of the Foundation's action on their application on or before 1 April.
In 2007, three of MIT Technology Review's TR35 young innovators were Hertz Fellows, with two more in 2009 and another in 2010.
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
that awards fellowship
Scholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
s to Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
students in the applied physical, biological and engineering sciences. It is considered to be the most competitive and prestigious graduate fellowship in science and engineering. The fellowship provides $250,000 of support over five years. The goal is for Fellows to be financially independent and free from traditional restrictions of their academic departments in order to promote innovation in collaboration with leading professors in the field. Through a rigorous application and interview process, the Hertz Foundation seeks to identify young scientists and engineers with the potential to change the world for the better and supports their research endeavors from an early stage. Fellowship recipients pledge to make their skills available to the United States in times of national emergency.
History
The Hertz Foundation was established in 1957 with the goal of supporting applied sciences education. The founder, John D. HertzJohn D. Hertz
John Daniel Hertz, Sr. was an American businessman, thoroughbred racehorse owner, and philanthropist.-Biography:...
, was a European emigrant whose family arrived in the United States with few resources, when the boy was five years old. Hertz matured into a prominent entrepreneur and business leader as the automotive age burgeoned in Chicago, Illinois. Initially, the Foundation granted undergraduate scholarships to qualified and financially-limited mechanical and electrical engineering students. In 1963, the undergraduate scholarship program was phased out and replaced with postgraduate fellowships leading to the award of the Ph.D. The scope of the studies supported by Fellowships was also enlarged to include applied sciences and engineering. Recipients of the Hertz Fellowship typically attend competitive graduate schools such as Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, and UC Berkeley. In 2008, 16 Fellows were named with fellowships of approximately $250,000 apiece from over 600 applicants.
Eligibility and application
To be eligible for a Hertz Fellowships, a student must be citizen or permanent resident of the United States of America. Eligible applicants must be students of the applied sciences or engineering and desire to pursue a Ph.D. degree in the applied sciences or engineering. College seniors as well as graduate students already pursuing a Ph.D. may apply.The application period opens on 1 September, when electronic applications are made available by the Hertz Foundation. All Fellowship applicants are notified by mail of the Foundation's action on their application on or before 1 April.
Notable Hertz Fellows
- Ilene Joy Busch-Vishniac (Provost and Vice President of McMaster University)
- Isaac ChuangIsaac ChuangIsaac L. Chuang currently leads the quanta research group at the Center for Ultracold Atoms at MIT. He received his undergraduate degrees in physics and electrical engineering and masters in electrical engineering at MIT. In 1997 he received his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford...
(NMR Quantum Computing pioneer) - Doyne Farmer (an originator of econo-physics)
- Mike FarmwaldMike FarmwaldMike Farmwald is a successful serial entrepreneur working in the Silicon Valley high-tech industry.Mike Farmwald is known for his combination of computer engineering skill and market vision...
(founder of Rambus, Inc.) - Alice P. Gast (President, Lehigh University)
- Peter Hagelstein (Inventor, X-Ray Laser)
- Danny Hillis (inventor, entrepreneur, and author)
- Derek Lidow (founder of iSuppli Corp.)
- Robert Lourie (Head of Futures research at Renaissance Technologies)
- John C. MatherJohn C. MatherJohn Cromwell Mather is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite with George Smoot. COBE was the first experiment to measure ".....
(Nobel Laureate 2006) - Mike Montemerlo (Winning Team Leader, DARPA Grand Challenge 2005)
- Nathan MyhrvoldNathan MyhrvoldNathan Paul Myhrvold , formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures. Myhrvold, usually with coinventors, holds 17 U.S. patents assigned to Microsoft and has applied for more than 500 patents. In addition, Myhrvold and coinventors hold 115 U.S...
(founder, Intellectual Ventures, former CTO, Microsoft) - Maj Gen Ellen Pawlikowski (Commander, Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center)
- William H. PressWilliam H. PressWilliam H. Press is an astrophysicist, theoretical physicist, and computational biologist. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Other honors include the 1981 Helen B...
(former Deputy Director for Science and Technology, Los Alamos National Lab) - Ray Sidney (Google entrepreneur)
- Alfred SpectorAlfred SpectorAlfred Z. Spector has been Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives at Google since November 2007. Prior to that he was a researcher and software executive at IBM...
(VP of Research, Google) - Michael Telson (former CFO at the Department of Energy)
- Lee T. Todd, Jr.Lee T. Todd, Jr.Lee Trover Todd, Jr. was the 11th president of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. Todd is also a well-known inventor and entrepreneur.-Early life and education:...
(Entrepreneur, President of the University of Kentucky) - Carl WiemanCarl WiemanCarl Edwin Wieman is an American physicist at the University of British Columbia and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for the production, in 1995 with Eric Allin Cornell, of the first true Bose–Einstein condensate.-Biography:...
(Nobel Laureate 2001)
In 2007, three of MIT Technology Review's TR35 young innovators were Hertz Fellows, with two more in 2009 and another in 2010.
Thesis Prize Winners
The Hertz Foundation requires that each Fellow furnish the Foundation a copy of his or her doctoral dissertation upon receiving the Ph.D. The Foundation's Thesis Prize Committee examines the Ph.D. dissertations for their overall excellence and pertinence to high-impact applications of the physical sciences. Each Thesis Prize winner receives an honorarium of at least $1000. In addition, two faculty members who profoundly influenced the winner (as designated by the Thesis Winners) also receive honoraria.- 2010 Erez Lieberman-Aiden, Evolution and the Emergence of Structure
- 2009 Paul Podsiadlo, Layer-by-Layer Assembly of Nanostructures Composites: Mechanics and Applications
- 2009 Mikhail Shapiro, Genetically Engineered Sensors for Non-Invasive Molecular Imaging using MRI
- 2008 Alexander Wissner-Gross, Physically Programmable Surfaces
- 2007 Lilian Childress, Coherent Manipulation of Single Quantum Systems in the Solid State
- 2007 Christopher Loose, The Production, Design, and Application of Antimicrobial Peptides
- 2007 Cindy Regal, Experimental Realization of BCS-BEC Crossover Physics with a Fermi Gas of Atoms
- 2006 Ed Boyden, Task-Selective Neural Mechanisms of Memory Encoding
- 2005 Cameron G. R. Geddes, Plasma Channel Guided Laser Wakefield Accelerator
- 2004 Youssef Marzouk, Vorticity Structure and Evolution in a Transverse Jet with New Algorithms for Scalable Particle Simulation
- 2003 David Kent IV, New Quantum Monte Carlo Algorithms to Efficiently Utilize Massively Parallel Computers
- 2002 Daniel Steck, Quantum Chaos, Transport, and Decoherence in Atom Optics
- 2001 Krishna S. Nayak, Fast Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- 2000 Joseph H. Thywissen, Internal State Manipulation for Neutral Atom Lithography
- 1999 Andrew J. Thiel Detection of DNA Hybridization to Oligonucleotide Arrays on Gold Surfaces Using In Situ Surface Plasmon Resonance and Fluorescence Imaging Techniques
- 1998 Adam T. Woolley, Microfabricated Integrated DNA Analysis Systems
- 1997 Deirdre Olynick, In-Situ Studies of Copper Nano-Particles Using a Novel Tandem Ultra-High Vacuum Particle Production Chamber Transmission Electron Microscope
- 1997 Eli N. Glezer, Ultrafast Electronic and Structural Dynamics in Solids
- 1996 Andrew H. Miklich, Low-Frequency Noise in High-T2 Superconductor Josephson Junctions, SQUIDs, and Magnetometers
- 1996 Krishna Shenoy, Monolithic Optoelectronic VLSI Circuit Design and Fabrication for Optical Interconnects
- 1995 Eric Altschuler, The Movement Rehearsal Paradigm is a Mental Communication Channel
- 1994 Richard D. Braatz, Robust Loopshaping for Process Control
- 1992 Kenneth L. Shepard, Electron Transport in Mesoscopic Conductors
- 1992 Robert C. Barrett, Development and Applications of Atomic Force Spectroscopy
- 1990 Scott L. Rakestraw, Monoclonal Antibody-Targeted Laser Photolysis of Tumor Tissue
- 1990 H. Paul ShuchH. Paul ShuchDr. H. Paul Shuch is an American scientist and engineer who has coordinated radio amateurs to help in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.-Overview:...
, Near Midair Collisions as an Indicator of General Aviation Collision Risk - 1989 W. Neil McCasland, Sensor and Actuator Selection for Fault-Tolerant Control of Flexible Structures
- 1988 Michael Reed, Si-SiO2 Interface Trap Anneal Kinetics
- 1988 Eric Swartz, Solid-Solid Thermal Boundary Resistance
- 1988 K. Peter Beiersdorfer, High Resolution Studies of the X-Ray Transitions in Highly Charged Neonlike Ions of the PLT Tokamak
- 1987 Douglas Bowman, High Speed Polycrystalline Silicon Photoconductors for On-Chip Pulsing and Gating
- 1987 Brian L. Heffner, Switchable Optical Fiber Taps Using the Acousto-Optic Bragg Interaction
- 1987 Dale Stuart, A Guidance Algorithm for Cooperative Tether-Mediated Orbital Rendezvous
- 1987 Aryeh M. Weiss, Real Time Control of the Permeability of Crosslinked Polyelectrolyte Membranes to Fluorescent Solutes
- 1986 Lawrence C. West, Spectroscopy of GaAs Quantum Wells
- 1986 Joel Fajans, Radiation Measurements of an Intermediate Energy Free Electron Laser
- 1985 W. Daniel HillisW. Daniel HillisWilliam Daniel "Danny" Hillis is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and author. He co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a company that developed the Connection Machine, a parallel supercomputer designed by Hillis at MIT...
, The Connection Machine - 1985 Stephen P. Boyd, Volterra Series: Engineering Fundamentals
- 1985 Steven R. Hall, A Failure Detection Algorithm for Linear Dynamic Systems
- 1984 Andrew M. Weiner, Femtosecond Optical Pulse Generation and Dephasing Measurements in Condensed Matter
- 1984 David Tuckerman, Heat-Transfer Microstructures for Integrated Circuits
- 1984 Michel A. Floyd, Single-Step Optimal Control of Large Space Structures
- 1983 Emanuel M. Sachs,Edge Stabilized Ribbon Growth: A New Method for the Manufacture of Photovoltaic Substrates
- 1982 Mike FarmwaldMike FarmwaldMike Farmwald is a successful serial entrepreneur working in the Silicon Valley high-tech industry.Mike Farmwald is known for his combination of computer engineering skill and market vision...
, On the Design of High Performance Digital Arithmetic Units - 1982 Lawrence C. Widdoes, Automatic Physical Design of Large Wire-Wrap Digital Systems
- 1981 Sherman Chan, Small Signal Control of Multiterminal DC/AC Power Systems
- 1981 Peter L. HagelsteinPeter L. HagelsteinPeter L. Hagelstein is a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He received a bachelor of science and a master of science degree in 1976, then a Doctor of Philosophy degree in electrical engineering in 1981,...
, Physics of Short Wavelength Laser Design - 1981 Charles E. Leiserson, Area-Efficient VLSI Computation
- 1981 Thomas McWilliams, Verification of Timing Constraints on Large Digital Systems