‘Extraordinary Benefactor’ Supports 12 More Early-Career Faculty

UC Davis has named 12 assistant professors from a variety of disciplines as the university’s newest Hellman Fellows, beneficiaries of a San Francisco-based fund that provides research support to promising faculty members when they need it most, in the early stages of their careers.

Awards for UC Davis’ fellows, Class of 2019, range from $10,000 to $30,000, for a total of $250,000. With that amount, the Hellman Fellows program in its 12 years at UC Davis surpassed $3 million in total awards, given to  148 faculty members.

“The Hellman Fellows Fund is an extraordinary benefactor,” said Phil Kass, vice provost of Academic Affairs, which administers the Hellman Fellows program at UC Davis. “We are so thankful for its recognition of the funding challenges that confront junior faculty.”

In fact, Chris and Warren Hellman had firsthand knowledge through their daughter Frances, a physicist who started her academic career at UC San Diego in 1987 and joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 2005.

The Hellman Fellows program began at UCSD and Berkeley in 1995, and today provides grant money to all 10 UCs and four private institutions — supporting more than 100 junior faculty members annually.

Each campus sets up its own process for applications, review and selection. Preference is given to faculty members who exhibit the potential for great academic distinction, but who have garnered only modest support and have not received other early-career awards.

Here are UC Davis’ newest Hellman Fellows listed with their departments and fellowship project titles. Click on any box to see that fellow’s description of the project that she or he will carry out with support from the Hellman fund.

Santiago Barreda-Castanon

Department of Linguistics, College of Letters and Science   

“Real-Time Visual Feedback for Speech Research and Teaching”

Barbara Blanco-Ulate

Department of Plant Sciences, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

“Characterizing the Epigenetics of Fruit Susceptibility to Fungal Decay”

Daniel Ewon Choe

Department of Human Ecology, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

“Stress, Self-Regulation and Resilience in Low-income Mothers and Toddlers”

Jonathan Herman

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering

“Adapting Reservoir Control Rules Under Climate Change”

Timothy N. Hyde

Department of Art Studio, College of Letters and Science

“A Microclimate of One: Models for the Near Future”

Patrick LeMieux

Department of Cinema and Digital Media, College of Letters and Science

“Money Games: Precarious Play and Risky Business in the Post-2008 Economy”

Yanhong Liu

Department of Animal Science, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

“Enhancing Sustainable Food-Producing Animal Productivity and Health by Feed-Based Technologies”

Thomas Maiorana

Department of Design, College of Letters and Science

“Playing With Systems: Tactile Games as a Way to Explore Systematic Challenges”

Graham McDougal

Department of Art and Art History, College of Letters and Science

“The Work of Art Designed for Technological Reproducibility”

Veronica L. Morales

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering

“Pore-Structural Features of Aquifers That Control Engineered Nanoparticle Spreading in Groundwater”

Caitlin Patler

Department of Sociology, College of Letters and Science

“The DACA Longitudinal Study (DLS)”

Andrew Wetzel

Department of Physics, College of Letters and Science

“Using Stars as Gravitational Antennae to Measure Dark Matter”

 

About the author(s)

Dateline Staff Dave Jones, editor, can be reached at 530-752-6556 or dljones@ucdavis.edu. Cody Kitaura, news and media relations specialist, can be reached at 530-752-1932 or kitaura@ucdavis.edu.