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Past Award Recipients

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. Click here to find out more about the Hellman Fellows Program.

2020 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
Saskias Casanova	Psychology	Youth Participatory Action Research, Cultural Knowledge & Resilience for (Im)migrant High School Students
A.M. Darke	Arts	Open Source Afro Hair Library
Camilla Hawthorne	Sociology	A Black Santa Cruz Sense of Place
Timothy Johnstone	Chemistry & Biochemistry	Medicinal Inorganic Chemistry to Treat Carbon Monoxide Poisoning and Neglected Tropical Disease
Jennifer Kelly	Feminist Studies	Detours: A Decolonial Guidebook to Palestine
Katy Seto	Environmental Studies	Turning the Tide: Shifting Access, Equity, and Vulnerability in Coastal California
Michael Wehner	Electrical and Computer Engineering	Low cost automation for Endotracheal Intubation
Margaret Zimmer	Earth and Planetary Sciences	Quantification of groundwater recharge in non-perennial rivers

2019 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
Susan Carpenter	Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology	Carpenter Lab Research Proposal
Karolina Karlic	Art	Rubberlands: a transmedia art work which visualizes the ways rubber manufacturing is socially, ecologically, and systemically formed
Nidhi Mahajan	Anthropology	Contesting visions of City and Nation: Land, and Sovereignty in Coastal Kenya
Adriana Manago	Psychology	Social Media, Gender, and Sexual Identity Development in Adolescence
Sara Niedzwiecki	Politics	Immigrants’ Access to Social Protection in Latin America
Savannah Shange	Anthropology	Milked: Poverty, Race and the Politics of Breastfeeding
Amanda Smith	Literature	Mapping the Amazon: Literary Geographies after the Rubber Boom
Sergey Syzranov	Physics	Conductors insensitive to disorder: insights from high dimensions
Jerry Zee	Anthropology	Algorithmic Necrosis: Machine Learning and Suicide Watch in China and Silicon Valley
Yu Zhang	Electrical and Computer Engineering	Modernizing Power System Planning and Operation to Improve Grid Resilience Against Hazardous Events

2018 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
Benjamin Breen	History	Indra's Net: Technology and Magic in the Early Modern World, 1600-1820
Angela Brooks	Biomolecular Engineering	Novel therapeutic targets in lung cancer from genes with altered mRNA splicing
Muriam Davis	History	Planning for Eurafrica: Development and Race in Algeria, 1958-1965
Anna Friz	Film & Digital Media	We Build Ruins
David Gordon	Politics	Accountability and Global Urban Climate Governance
Michael Hance	Physics; SCIPP	Searching for New Particles and Symmetries at the Large Hadron Collider
Cynthia Ling Lee	Theater Arts	Lost Chinatowns: a multimedia dance-theater work exploring Santa Cruz's historical Chinatowns
François Monard	Mathematics	Inverse problems, integral geometry and uncertainty quantification
Vicky Oelze	Anthropology	Chimpanzee intoxication and the evolution of termite associated tool use
Yuan Ping	Chemistry & Biochemistry	Theory Design of Charged Defects for Two-dimensional Quantum Technologies
Xi Zhang	Earth & Planetary Sciences	Deep Atmosphere of Jupiter: Insights from the Juno Spacecraft

2017 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
James Ackman	MCD Biology	Functional Dynamics of Cerebral Lateralization in the Developing Brain
Terrence Blackburn	Earth and Planetary Sciences	U-series Comminution Dating of Fine-Particle Production in Glaciers, Rivers, Faults and Extraterrestrial Surfaces
Rebecca Covarrubias	Psychology	Acknowledging the Cultural Strengths of First-Generation Students: Longitudinal Explorations of Familial Interdependence and Hard Independence
Renée Fox	Literature	Necromantic Victorians: Reanimation and the Historical Imagination in British and Irish Literature
Alma Heckman	History & Jewish Studies	Radical Roads Not Taken: Moroccan Jewish Trajectories, 1925-1975
Dongwook Lee	Applied Mathematics & Statistics	New High-Order Schemes for Computational Fluid Dynamics using Gaussian Processes
Amy Mihyang Ginther	Theater Arts	No Danger of Winning
Tsim Schneider	Anthropology	Comparative Archaeologies of Native-Lived Colonialism in California
Christopher Vollmers	Biomolecular Engineering	Determining the Diversity of Individual Human B cells using Nanopore Sequencing

2016 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
Mark Amengual	Languages and Applied Linguistics	Living in two languages: What constitutes “Good Pronunciation” in bilingual speech?
Alexander Ayzner	Chemistry and Biochemistry	Semiconducting Polyelectrolytes as Building Blocks for a Soft Artificial Photosystem
Rajarshi Guhaniyogi	Applied Mathematics and Statistics	Hierarchical Bayesian Statistical Modeling of Massive Scale Spatially Referenced Databases
Juhee Lee	Applied Mathematics and Statistics	Novel Nonparametric Bayesian Inference for Metagenomics with Two Applications
Samantha Matherne	Philosophy	Idealism in Exile: Cassirer and the Warburg Institute
Nick Mitchell	Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies	Documenting Labor in California Black Studies
Jevgenij Raskatov	Chemistry and Biochemistry	Cell Culture Studies of a Novel Chiral Variant of Alzheimer’s Amyloid Beta 1-42 Peptide
Marilou Sison-Mangus	Ocean Sciences	Investigating the chemical cross-talk between the toxin-producing diatom and its associated bacteria
Jennifer Taylor	Film and Digital Media Department	Redneck Muslim

2015 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
Gerald Casel	Theater Arts	Splinters In Our Ankles – Collective Cultural Amnesia and Performed Resistance in the Tinikling, The Philippine National Dance
Nicolas Davidenko	Psychology	How experience shapes orientation-dependent visual processing
Jennifer Derr	History	Agriculture and Public Health in Egypt
Rebecca DuBois	Biomolecular Engineering	Understanding how astrovirus enters human cells
Lars Fehren-Schmitz	Anthropology	Colonial Encounters and Climate Change: Mapping the Evolution of Human Genetic Diversity in the Central Andes throughout the Pre-Columbian Period
Grace Gu	Economics	Firm-paid Benefits, Employment, and Monetary Policy
Eric Palkovacs	Ecology & Evolutionary Biology	An experimental test for eco-evolutionary feedbacks along a classic evolutionary pathway in threespine stickleback
Juned Shaikh	History	Spatializing Caste and Class
Maziar Toosarvandani	Linguistics	How do languages vary? Aspect and its interpretation in discourse

2014 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
Eric Aldrich	Economics	Filtering Methods for Volatility Estimation
Amy Rose Deal	Linguistics	Studies in Linguistic Diversity: Pronouns and Tense
Marc Matera	History	Decolonization and the Development of Race Relations
Adam Millard-Ball	Environmental Studies	Urban Sprawl: A Global Analysis

2013 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
Jennifer Horne	Film & Digital Media	Emergent Humanitarian Media, 1917-1936
Sylvanna Falcón	Latin American & Latino Studies	Expanding the Conceptualization of Human Rights by New Constituencies
Tesla Jeltema	Physics	Using Observations of Large-Scale Structure in the Universe to Probe Models of Dark Matter and Cosmic Rays

2012 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
Megan Moodie	Anthropology	Genomic research: benefits and drawbacks
Dejan Milutinović	Applied Mathematics & Statistics	Motion Capturing System for Real-Time Control of Indoor Robots
Ian Garrick-Bethell	Earth & Planetary Sciences	Lunar Impactors: A Low Cost Robotic Mission to Study Lunar Magnetism and Surface Water
Rita Mehta	EE Biology	Assessing the potential importance of the California moray in structuring kelp forest communities around Catalina Island
Irene Lusztig	Film & Digital Media	Lessons for Imminent Motherhood
Shannon Gleeson	Latin American & Latino Studies	Rights in Theory, Rights in Practice: Unpacking the Individual and Institutional Elements of Enforcing Worker Rights
Mark Massoud	Politics	Law in Conflict: Legal Activism and the Rule of Law in War-afflicted Regions

2011 Recipients

Faculty Name	Department	Title of Project
Yiman Wang	Film & Digital Media	Performing Critical Differences – Anna May Wong’s “Yellow Yellowface”
John Jota Leaños	Film & Digital Media	Frontera! Animated Histories of the Southwest Borderlands
Neda Atanasoski	Feminist Studies	Publication preparation for Afterimages of Empire: Race, Freedom, and the U.S. Postsocialist Imaginary; and preparation for National Identity and Islam in Bosnia
Matthew Wagers	Linguistics	Grammatical role assignment in Chamorro language comprehension: Incorporating underrepresented languages in dynamic models of language structure
Dorian Bell	Literature	Frontiers of Hate: Anti-Semitism and Empire in Nineteenth-Century France
Christine Hong	Literature	Legal Fictions: Afro-Asian Human Rights Cultural Production and the Pax Americana in the Pacific Rim
Kathleen Kay	EE Biology	Evolutionary Genetics of Reinforcement: Speciation Mechanisms Between Costus pulverulentus and C. scaber
Victoria Auerbuch Stone	METOX	Germ warfare: how Yersinia manipulates its host.
Mayanthi Fernando	Anthropology	On the Muslim Question: Anxieties of the French Secular
Aspen Gorry	Economics	Learning, Multi-worker Firms, and the Cyclicality of Worker Flows
Eduardo Mosqueda	Education	Linguistic Segregation and Educational Achievement in California’s Public Schools
Hector Perla Jr.	Latin American & Latino Studies	Revolutionary Deterrence: U.S. Coercion & Transnational Resistance by Sandinista Nicaragua