The Hellman Fellows Fund has made a gift of $1.4 million to the UCLA Hellman Fellows Program to continue its support of promising assistant professors who show capacity for great distinction in their research.

The UCLA Hellman Fellows Program was established in 2011 with an initial gift from the Hellman Fellows Fund of $1.25 million. Awards are made through a competitive process based on proposals submitted by individual faculty members. The Hellman grants are available to faculty in the UCLA College and most professional schools.

Over the years, the Hellman Fellows Fund has supported more than 850 junior faculty members, who are now chairs and heads of departments, MacArthur fellows and tenured faculty with long track records of successful research.

Among the 2015 Hellman Fellows at UCLa are Stephen Acabado of anthropology;  Michelle Caswell of information studies; Yvonne Chen of chemical and biomolecular engineering; Lauren Duquette-Rury of sociology; Ian Holloway of social welfare; Jingyi Li of statistics/human genetics; Kirk Lohmueller of ecology and evolutionary biology; Lingsen Meng of Earth, planetary and space sciences; Christopher Tausanovitch of political science; Jasmine Trice of film, television and digital media; and Alex Wang of law.

Established by Warren and Chris Hellman and their children in 1994, the Hellman Fellows Program was started when family members, who were junior faculty themselves, observed that young faculty were well-funded when first hired, but challenges would arise after start-up funding is exhausted and before their research qualifies for other external support. The Hellman Fellows Program was designed to assist promising young faculty at this point in their career.

The gift, which will be paid over a period of five years, is part of the $4.2 billion UCLA Centennial Campaign, which is scheduled to conclude in December 2019 during UCLA’s 100th anniversary year.