Established at UCSC in 2011, the purpose of the Hellman Fellows Program is to support substantially the research of promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their research. The Hellman Fellows Program has been established at thirteen institutions, nine of which are campuses in the UC system.
The Hellman family has observed that junior faculty are often well-funded when first hired, but challenges arise in 2-3 years when start-up funding is exhausted and before first grants are obtained. This program is designed to assist promising young faculty at this point in their careers.
The awards are open to support assistant professors in all fields of study at UC Santa Cruz who have shown promise of distinction. Applicants must have served at least six but no more than eleven quarters at the assistant professor rank as of the start of the fellowship award period. The fellowship award period begins on July 1 of the year in which the fellowship is awarded.
Faculty who plan to come up for tenure in the upcoming academic year should not apply for the award. Faculty awarded the Hellman fellowship who apply for tenure during the year they hold the award are expected to relinquish the award and return all funds.
Funding will be split roughly equally between assistant professors in the physical and life sciences and engineering, and assistant professors in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The maximum award is $50,000, although most awards are expected to be in the $10,000 to $25,000 range. Proposals should be submitted by individual faculty members.
Awards may be used for any research-related expense, such as research assistants, equipment, materials, conferences, or travel. The award may also be used to pay for up to one summer month of the Fellow’s salary and benefits. The standard award period is one year (July 1-June 30) although extensions are sometimes granted with justification as long as the candidate does not plan to initiate a tenure review during the period of the extension.
For more information, visit the Hellman Fellows website at: www.hellmanfellows.org
In this section
2025 Recipients
Faculty
Department
Project Title
Sophia Azeb
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Another Country: Translational Blackness and the Afro-Arab.
Carla Hernández Garavito
Anthropology
Pots and People: A Collaborative Ethnography of Ceramic Production in Huarochirí (Peru)
Tae Myung Huh
Electrical and Computer Engineering
A No-Damage, Highly Adaptable Gripper for Robotic Harvesting
Audrie Lin
Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology
Effects of menstrual hygiene and stigma reduction interventions on adolescent health
Jennifer Mogannam
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Of Unfinished Revolution: Resistance and Coalition as Palestinian-Lebanese Liberation Praxis
Danny Rahal
Psychology
Daily Stress Responses and Cannabis Use among Young Adult College Students
Martin Rizzo-Martinez
Film and Digital Media
Wounded Lee: The Red Power Movement in 1970s California in the Wake of Alcatraz
Edgar Shaghoulian
Physics
Event horizons and quantum gravity
Kira Tait
Politics
Shifting Perceptions of Migrants’ Rights in South Africa
Hao Ye
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Exploring Exciton-polaritons in Two-dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenides using Wavefunction-based Ab Initio Methods
Andy Yeh
Biomolecular Engineering
Price Incentives for Resource Conservation: Experimental Evidence from Groundwater Irrigation