Hertz Foundation

Infobox Non-profit
Non-profit_name = Fannie and John Hertz Foundation
Non-profit_
founded_date = 1957
founder = Fannie and John Hertz
location = Livermore, California
origins =
key_people = John F. Holzrichter Ph.D., President
Thomas Weaver, Ph.D., Senior Fellowship Interviewer
Lowell Wood, Ph.D., Senior Fellowship Interviewer
area_served = United States
focus = Applied sciences and engineering
method = Ph.D. Fellowships
revenue =
endowment =
num_employees =
owner =
Non-profit_slogan =
homepage = http://www.hertzfoundation.org The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation is an American non-profit organization that awards fellowships to Ph.D. students in the applied physical, biological and engineering sciences. It is considered one of the most competitive and prestigious graduate fellowships 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 his or her 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. Hertz, was an Austrian emigrant who came to the United States from Europe as a very poor young boy and matured into a prominent entrepreneur and business leader in the advent of the automotive age. Originally, 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 both the fields of applied sciences and engineering. Recipients of the Hertz Fellowship typically attend very 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.

Eligibility and Application

To be eligible for a Hertz Fellowships, a students must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States of America. Eligible applicants must be students 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 in the process pursuing a Ph.D. may apply.

The application period opens on September 1, 2008 when electronic applications are made available by the Hertz Foundation. Completed applications with all supporting materials provided by the posted deadline will receive full consideration. Late or incomplete submissions are subject to the discretion of the Hertz Foundation. Untimely or incompletely-submitted applications will be entertained only at the Foundation's discretion and convenience. All Fellowship applicants are notified by mail of the Foundation's action on their application on or before April 1, 2009.

Notable Hertz Fellows

* Doyne Farmer (an originator of econo-physics, Hertz Fellow)
* Mike Farmwald (founder of Rambus, Inc., Hertz Fellow)
* Danny Hillis (inventor, entrepreneur, and author, Hertz Fellow)
* Derek Lidow (founder of iSuppli Corp., Hertz Fellow)
* Robert Lourie (head of Futures research at Renaissance Technologies, Hertz Fellow)
* John Mather (Nobel Laureate 2006, Hertz Fellow 1974)
* Mike Montemerlo (Stanford DARPA Grand Challenge team leader, Hertz Fellow)
* Ray Sidney (Google entrepreneur, Hertz Fellow 1995)
* Michael Telson (former CFO at the Department of Energy, Hertz Fellow)
* Carl Wieman (Nobel Laureate 2001, Hertz Fellow 1977)

In 2007, three of MIT Technology Review's TR35 young innovators were Hertz Fellows.

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, designated by Prize winners, who profoundly influenced the winner also receive honoraria.

* 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 Edward 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 Shuch, 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 Hillis, 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 Farmwald, 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. Hagelstein, 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

External links

* [http://www.hertzfoundation.org Hertz Foundation]