Applications open for 2027 Hertz Fellowship in science and engineering

The Hertz Foundation has officially opened the application window for the 2027 Hertz Fellowship, widely regarded as the most competitive doctoral fellowship available to graduate students in the applied sciences, engineering, and mathematics in the United States. The announcement, made on September 1, 2026, sets in motion a selection process that has, for nearly seven decades, identified some of the most consequential scientific minds of their generations. Applications must be submitted by October 30, 2026, with finalists named in February 2027 and the coveted awards formally announced in May 2027. For the students who ultimately receive the fellowship, the prize is far more than financial support; it is entry into one of the most storied and influential scientific communities in the world.

The fellowship itself offers up to five years of funding, combining a generous stipend with full tuition equivalent, a structure deliberately designed to free recipients from the conventional constraints that often shape doctoral research. Rather than tethering students to specific grants, laboratories, or pre-defined projects, the Hertz model gives its fellows the latitude to pursue bold, high-risk, high-reward lines of inquiry that might otherwise wither under the pressures of conventional graduate funding mechanisms. This philosophy reflects a long-standing conviction at the foundation that transformative science emerges not from incremental, tightly managed projects, but from individuals with the initiative and imagination to follow their curiosity wherever it leads. Beyond the money, fellows gain lifelong access to mentorship, professional development events, and a global network of more than 1,300 innovators spanning academia, industry, government, and entrepreneurship.

Derek Haseltine, senior director of the Hertz Fellowship Program, framed the foundation’s search in characteristically ambitious terms. The foundation, he explained, is looking for students defined by initiative, relentless curiosity, and creativity, drawn to solving the challenges that matter most. His invitation to prospective applicants captured the intellectual spirit the program prizes: those who find themselves endlessly pushing past the question of “why” in their research are precisely the candidates the foundation wants to hear from. That framing is not mere rhetoric. The fellowship’s selection process is famously grueling, involving multiple rounds of technical interviews conducted by scientists and engineers who probe not just what candidates know, but how they think, how they respond to unfamiliar problems, and whether they possess the originality and resilience to pursue ideas that others might abandon.

The rigor of that process is by design, and its track record speaks for itself. Since 1957, the Hertz Foundation has supported innovators whose work has transformed fields ranging from astrophysics to artificial intelligence. Among its alumni are Nobel laureate John Mather, senior astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and former project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope; Kimberly Budil, director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Mung Chiang, president of Northwestern University. More recently, the fellowship’s reach extended into the frontier of artificial intelligence: Dario Amodei and Jared Kaplan, co-founders of Anthropic, the prominent AI safety and research company, are both Hertz Fellows. The concentration of fellows in positions of extraordinary scientific and technological leadership has made the fellowship something of a leading indicator of where consequential research is headed.

The selection process for the 2027 cohort is being led by two distinguished Hertz Fellows: Philip Welkhoff, director of the malaria program at the Gates Foundation, and Anna Bershteyn, managing director of science and global health R&D at Coefficient Giving and associate professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Their involvement underscores a hallmark of the program: the interviews and evaluations are conducted largely by fellows themselves, ensuring that those who assess candidates share the deep technical grounding and firsthand understanding of what it takes to do original scientific work. Bershteyn’s own career, bridging mathematical modeling and global health policy, exemplifies the kind of boundary-crossing ambition the fellowship seeks to cultivate.

One distinctive feature of the fellowship remains a moral, though non-binding, commitment: every Hertz Fellow pledges to make their skills available to the United States in times of national emergency. The provision dates to the foundation’s Cold War origins and reflects its enduring mission of advancing American scientific and technological leadership. While the commitment has rarely if ever been formally invoked, it remains a defining element of the fellowship’s identity, signaling that the foundation views scientific talent as a strategic national resource and its fellows as citizens whose expertise carries obligations beyond their own careers.

The Hertz Community, as the fellowship’s alumni network is known, has in recent years deliberately extended its reach beyond its own membership, drawing leading minds and institutions from around the world into its orbit. The 2026 Hertz Summer Workshop, held outside Chicago, featured a keynote address from Mary Brunkow, the 2025 Nobel laureate and distinguished investigator at the Institute for Systems Biology. This month, the foundation launched a salon series pairing Hertz Fellows with researchers at ARIA, the United Kingdom’s research funding agency, which is led by Hertz Fellow Kathleen Fisher. These initiatives reflect a conscious effort to keep the community’s thinking connected to the broader currents of science and society, ensuring that the fellowship functions not merely as a funding mechanism but as a living intellectual network capable of convening Nobel laureates, national laboratory directors, and frontier researchers across disciplines and borders.

The foundation has also built an extensive infrastructure of partnerships that translate the fellowship’s intellectual capital into real-world application. Collaborations with organizations including Analog Devices, Breakthrough Energy Discovery, the Gates Foundation, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory provide fellows with opportunities such as internships and collaborative research placements. These arrangements connect doctoral research in fields like semiconductor physics, clean energy technology, global health, and high-performance computing to the industrial and governmental settings where such work often achieves its greatest impact. For fellows weighing whether to pursue academic, entrepreneurial, or policy-oriented careers, the partnerships offer rare early exposure to the full spectrum of pathways available to technically exceptional scientists.

Practical considerations have also been addressed for the many strong applicants who will not ultimately receive the fellowship. More than 50 universities maintain standing agreements with the Hertz Foundation, allowing successful candidates to accept their awards quickly and seamlessly without protracted negotiations over funding terms. In addition, the foundation has established an agreement with Case Western Reserve University, which offers full financial benefits to Hertz Fellowship finalists who choose to attend that institution for graduate school. The arrangement softens the blow for finalists, a group that already represents a tiny fraction of an exceptionally competitive applicant pool, and ensures that even those who fall just short of the award retain access to a fully funded doctoral education.

Prospective applicants will have two opportunities to learn more about the process before the application deadline. Fellowship Director Derek Haseltine will lead information sessions with current Hertz Fellows on Thursday, September 10, at 6 p.m. EDT, and Monday, September 14, at Noon EDT. The sessions are designed to help candidates prepare their strongest application packages, with Hertz Fellows facilitating breakout sessions drawn from their own application, academic, and research experiences. Planned topics include strategies for applying at different academic stages, whether as a college senior, during a gap year, or as a current graduate student; choosing a compelling research project; and navigating STEM fields as an underrepresented student. The inclusion of the latter topic reflects a growing emphasis within the community on broadening the pipeline of candidates and ensuring that the fellowship draws from the widest possible pool of talent.

For more than 60 years, the Hertz Foundation has stood as a pillar of independent support for American science, cultivating a multidisciplinary network of innovators whose work has positively impacted millions of lives. With the 2027 application cycle now open, the foundation is once again searching for the rare students who combine technical brilliance with the audacity to pursue ideas capable of transforming society. For those who believe they fit that description, the path begins with an application due by the end of October, and, for a chosen few, leads to five years of freedom, a lifelong community, and a place in a lineage of scientists whose fingerprints mark some of the most significant scientific achievements of the modern era.