Hellman Awards Deepening Research into Genomes, Health and Computer Science

By Lorena Anderson

July 22, 2024

This year's Hellman Award recipients come from all three schools.

Three faculty members have joined the prestigious ranks of Hellman Fellowship recipients this year.

Applied mathematics Professor Tomas Rube, who studies mathematical biology, Professor Andrea Polonijo, a medical sociologist, and computer science and engineering Professor Peingfei Su will receive funding through their fellowships for projects they have proposed.

What these professors - and a total of 65 UC Merced faculty members - have to thank for these projects is the Hellman Fellows Fund, created through a 1995 endowed gift to the University of California from Chris and Warren Hellman and family to provide annual support to faculty as they launch their careers. UC Merced began receiving some of that funding in 2011, and in 2020, the Hellman Foundation endowed a fund at UC Merced.

Each fellowship recognizes promising untenured faculty members who show capacity for great distinction in their chosen fields.

"My parents used to say that creating the Hellman Fellows Program was one of the best things our family ever did," said Frances Hellman, president of the Hellman Fellows Fund. "Having had the opportunity to support over 2,000 faculty over the years, I enthusiastically agree. Their discoveries, commitment to their work and great potential continue to inspire us year after year."

Each year's selection committee sees a wide variety of proposals and applications for the awards. In the 2023-24 school year, there were 17 applicants from UC Merced.

Faculty members from all three schools have been named Hellman Fellows this year. Each receives between $10,000 and $50,000, based on their project needs.

Rube's research centers on understanding how the genome functions, and the project he has proposed aims to understand how proteins search the genome for important DNA sequences.

"Locating these sequences is like finding a needle in a haystack, and we will study how proteins allocate their time as they sift through the genome," Rube said. "This funding will allow my graduate student to develop an algorithm that quantifies how the search process depends on DNA sequence, thus providing a new lens for studying the genome."

Polonijo, who studies health disparities, said her grant will support a project to examine how stigma and state-level policies shape inequalities in preventable diseases for sexual and gender minority groups.

"Receiving the Hellman Fellowship is an incredible honor, particularly considering the documented scarcity of scientific resources dedicated to research on LGBTQ+ health," she said. "This award not only underscores the significance of my research but also enables me to train a graduate student in producing policy-relevant research to help advance health equity."

Su's research interests lie in programming languages, high-performance computing and compiler techniques, especially to provide tools for analyzing and optimizing software inefficiencies.

With this fellowship, Su is working on developing new techniques to measure, analyze and optimize systemic inefficiencies across modern deep-learning software stacks, from low-level frameworks to high-level algorithms.

"Receiving the Hellman Fellowship is a tremendous honor and vital financial support to encourage and sponsor me to accomplish the proposed work," Su said. "The research outcomes will strengthen the foundation of code analysis and enable significant performance enhancement of deep-learning software stacks and help keep a sustained advancement of various scientific domains."

Each recipient now joins the Society of Hellman Fellows. Past Hellman Fellows are recognized internationally for their research, and many are now leaders in their fields around the world.