Press Releases  

Hertz Fellow David Thompson's company Orbital Sciences Corporation, announces launch of America's newest medium-class space vehicle, the Antares Rocket. Orbital now poised to conduct cargo resupply demonstrations missions to the International Space Station in mid 2013.

Hertz Fellow Ed Boyden is working on tools to map the human brain to get a better understanding of how thoughts lead to actions, and how neural circuits lead to disease.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) will present Mung Chiang of Princeton University with this year's Alan T. Waterman Award. Chiang is an electrical engineering professor who uses innovative mathematical analyses to design simpler and more powerful wireless networks. This annual award honors outstanding researchers under the age of 35 in any field of science or engineering that NSF supports. Chiang's achievements will be recognized with a $1-million award, spread over five years, to help further his research.

Boyden is recognized for ground-breaking research in collaboration with Karl Deisseroth at Stanford University. Their work builds on earlier discoveries by four European researchers: Ernst Bamber , Georg Nagel and Peter Hegemann in Germany and Gero Miesenbock , now in Oxford, U.K. The €1M prize will be shared equally by all six researchers for their work in optogenetics, viewed as one of the most impactful developments in neuroscience of the last decade.

The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Prize Committee has named John Stockton, PhD as recipient of the 2012 Peter Strauss Award. The $5000 award is given to an in-school or recently graduated Hertz Fellow who has demonstrated exceptional leadership in his or her entrepreneurial endeavors.

The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Names Fellow Zachary Wissner-Gross and his partner, John Lee Winners of $25,000 Inaugural Newman Entrepreneurial Initiative Grant. School Yourself was chosen for transformative, interactive delivery of the math and science learning experience

The National Institutes of Health continues its commitment to high risk-high reward research. Eighty-one awards are being given to pursue visionary science that exhibit the potential to transform scientific fields and speed the translation of research into improved health, under the High Risk-High Reward program supported by the National Institutes of Health Common Fund.