For three decades, the Society of Hellman Fellows has provided early-career support to junior faculty across the University of California’s 10 campuses. The program was established by Warren and Chris Hellman and their family, with a $125 million endowment from the Hellman Fellows Fund. Its aim is to assist assistant professors who demonstrate potential for significant achievement in fields ranging from arts and humanities to social sciences and STEM disciplines.
The idea for the fellowship emerged from Frances Hellman’s experience as a young physicist at UC San Diego. She recounted: “I came into UC San Diego as an assistant professor in 1987 and had a certain level of startup funds, and spent those on getting my lab built. I then went through this period of time almost all young faculty go through where you’ve used up your startup funds but you haven’t yet gotten the major funding you need to get tenure.”
After hearing about these challenges, Warren Hellman proposed a fellowship program targeting second- and third-year faculty members to provide crucial early-career resources. The first fellowships were piloted at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley in 1995 before expanding systemwide.
The broad scope of the fellowship has enabled collaborations across disciplines that may not have otherwise occurred. Michael Bishop, former UCSF chancellor, said in a 2014 interview: “Warren made it possible for many people who otherwise might not have made it to have thrived. Some of the things they [young faculty] were doing really stretched the boundaries of what I would consider academia in a way that I thought was admirable, terrific.”
In 2020, after 25 years of operation, the Hellman family established an endowment to ensure permanent support for junior faculty throughout all UC campuses.
“Hellman fellowships have been instrumental in supporting thousands of our junior faculty as they become leaders in their fields, shaping scholarship across the arts, medicine and sciences,” said University of California Provost and Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs Katherine Newman. “30 years on, we can see clearly the enormous impact of the Hellman family’s gift not only to UC, but to the nation. We are eternally grateful to the Hellmans and excited to witness the transformational research contributed by these fellows.”
Each awardee receives up to $70,000. Past fellows have advanced research in areas such as space exploration, chronic disease studies, addiction science, energy innovation, cancer therapies, music composition, gender studies, psychology, soil science, and bioengineering.
UC Merced professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe described how her award helped secure federal funding: “The Hellman award allowed my lab to collect essential preliminary data that we used to demonstrate the significance of our proposed work for a major federal grant. This kind of funding enables early career researchers to conduct the foundational work that sets our research programs up for long-term success.”
Other notable alumni include Peidong Yang (UC Berkeley), Dan Choe (UC Davis), Steve Mahler (UC Irvine), Yvonne Chen (UCLA), Victoria Reyes (UC Riverside), Lei Liang (UC San Diego), Dr. Kirsten Bibbings-Domingo (UCSF), Michelle O’Malley (UC Santa Barbara), and Rebecca Covarrubias (UC Santa Cruz). Their achievements span recognition by national academies and leading scientific societies.
The impact of these fellowships continues as new cohorts are named annually at each campus within the University of California system.
