The journey to becoming a tenured professor is arduous, requiring years of commitment, sacrifice, and study. At the end of the road lies transformative discovery, the ability to shape one’s chosen field, and the lasting legacy of influencing thousands of young minds.
But how do you make the leap from being a young professor trying to make your mark to earning the federal research support necessary for such a career?
That’s where the Society of Hellman Fellows comes in. Celebrating its 30th year, the Hellman fellowship has supported thousands of junior faculty across UC’s 10 campuses. This crucial early backing has launched some truly stellar careers, allowing recipients to do the kind of life-changing work that results not only in tenure, but recognition and support from places like the MacArthur and Guggenheim Foundations, along with prestigious national academies in the arts, engineering, medicine and sciences.
The brainchild of Warren and Chris Hellman and their children, the program was endowed with a $125M gift from the Hellman Fellows Fund to support promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their chosen fields, from the arts and humanities to social sciences and STEM.
The Hellman family was inspired to create the program by the experiences of Frances Hellman, daughter of noted philanthropist and UC Berkeley alum Warren Hellman, as she built her career and reputation as a physicist and leader in materials science. She presently serves as a professor of physics at UC Berkeley and served as president of the American Physical Society, whose Joseph F. Keithley Award For Advances in Measurement Science she won in 2006. But as a young professor, she faced the conundrum of how to get funding for the research that would let her make her mark.
“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,” Hellman recalls. “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.”
Hellman achieved tenure at UC San Diego, but shared with her father the challenges young faculty face. He hit upon the idea of a fellowship program for second- and third-year faculty that would provide an important early-career boost to promising young professors and help them drive their fields in exciting new directions. In 1995, Hellman fellowship pilot programs launched at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley. The program quickly spread across all 10 UC campuses with remarkable results.
The broad support for young researchers, regardless of field, opened up unforeseen avenues of collaboration.
“Warren made it possible for many people who otherwise might not have made it to have thrived,” former UCSF chancellor Michael Bishop said in a 2014 interview. “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 funding the program, the Hellman family generously established an endowment to allow the program to continue in perpetuity across UC’s 10 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.”
Hellman fellowships have supported advances in space exploration, chronic disease research and addiction science, among other topics, providing support of up to $70,000 to each individual awardee.
Former fellows like UC Merced soil biogeochemist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe demonstrate the potential of the Hellman award to impact not only specific fields of art or research, but public life.
“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,” Berhe said. “This kind of funding enables early career researchers to conduct the foundational work that sets our research programs up for long-term success.”
Berhe is now a full professor and Falasco chair in Earth Sciences and Geology at UC Merced, as well as the director of its Sierra Nevada Institute. She is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, winner of the prestigious Joanne Simpson Medal from the American Geophysical Union, and past director of the Office of Science for the U.S. Department of Energy (the nation’s largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences). Her TED Talk, explaining the role of soil in sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide to a general audience, has accumulated over 2 million views.
Other UC Hellman alums include:
Peidong Yang is a professor and S. K. and Angela Chan Distinguished Chair in Energy in the UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and one of the world’s most highly-cited researchers in multiple fields.
Dan Choe is a UC Davis associate professor of Human Development & Family Studies studying stress, self-regulation and resilience in low-income mothers and children, who led a $2.7 million study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Steve Mahler is a UC Irvine professor of neurobiology and behavior studying the causes of opioid addiction. His vital work has been funded for over a decade by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
Yvonne Chen is a UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics whose work on next-generation T-cell therapies for cancer has been recognized by the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Cancer Research Institute, among others.
Victoria Reyes is UC Riverside vice chair and associate professor of gender and sexuality studies and author of “Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines.”
Lei Liang is Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Music at UC San Diego and winner of the 2020 Grawemeyer Award, the top classical music honor, often referred to as “the Nobel Prize for music.”
Dr. Kirsten Bibbings-Domingo is the Lee Goldman, MD Endowed Professor of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is an inducted member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is currently the 17th Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the JAMA Network.
Michelle O’Malley is a professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. She was among the MIT Technology Review’s celebrated “35 Innovators Under 35” and was also a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers — the highest honor bestowed on early-career scientists by the U.S. government.
Rebecca Covarrubias is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at UC Santa Cruz whose research interests focus on issues of identity, culture, health, and educational equity for minoritized and diverse individuals. She has also been a vocal leader in UC’s systemwide efforts to support the academic success of first-generation college students.
Hellman fellows from the UC system are among our most promising researchers. Explore the work of the next generation of scholars in the campus links below.
UC Berkeley
UC Davis
UCLA: A boost for early-career faculty
UC Irvine: Eight UC Irvine faculty members named Hellman fellows
UC Merced: Hellman fellowships welcome three new members from UC Merced
UC Riverside: Early-career faculty win fellowships
UC San Diego: Largest cohort in UC San Diego program’s history receives Hellman fellowships
UC San Francisco
UC Santa Cruz
UC Santa Barbara: Bioengineering's Marley Dewey named 2025 Hellman Faculty fellow
