Tony Pan, PhD

2010 Hertz Fellow
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Tony is the co-founder and CEO of Modern Hydrogen, which produces clean hydrogen by decarbonizing natural gas at the point of use. Modern also sells and sequesters the captured carbon as a clean material to decarbonize the built environment.

Tony is an inventor on 250+ patents pending, spanning fields such as energy, nanoelectronics, and medical devices. Formerly, he was a member of Global Future Council on Energy, World Economic Forum and a Term Member, Council on Foreign Relations. He consulted for the Invention Science Fund, Global Good Fund, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. During the ’08 financial crisis, he was a strategist at Goldman Sachs, helping navigate the mortgage meltdown. Recognitions include the Forbes 30 under 30 in Science, the MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35 and the Business Journal 40 under 40.

Tony’s PhD is from Harvard, where he held three national fellowships from the Hertz Foundation, Soros, and National Science Foundation. There he explored the cosmic dawn, the “Let there be light” moment in the nascent universe, when the very first stars lived and died in spectacular explosions. His alma mater is Stanford University.

Graduate Studies

Harvard University
Physics
Properties of Unusually Luminous Supernovae

Undergraduate Studies

Harvard University

Awards

2020, 35 Innovators Under 35, MIT Technology Review
2018, 40 under 40, Business Journal
2016, Peter Strauss Award, Fannie & John Hertz Foundation
2015, Forbes “30 Under 30: Science”, Forbes
2010, Soros Fellow, Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans

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Nov 30, 2022
Hertz Fellow Nathan Myhrvold, visionary technology and business leader, reflects on the anonymous $5 million gift that will fund a Hertz Fellowship in his honor.
Dec 16, 2021
The Hertz Foundation's mentoring program brings mid-career and senior leaders in the sciences together with in-school Hertz Fellows for regular online conversations about careers.
Mar 7, 2017
Pan and Mankin’s Company, Modern Electron, Aims to Revolutionize Electric Power Generation
Feb 25, 2016
Taking a page from advances in semiconductor technology, Hertz Fellows Max Mankin and Tony Pan want to overturn more than a century of electricity generation via steam turbines using paper-thin, nano-engineered generators, enabling more efficient, cheaper, and more universally available power generation than ever possible before.