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Three Harvard researchers named Schmidt Science Fellows

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Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

2 min read

Three Harvard researchers have been selected for the fourth cohort of Schmidt Science Fellows, a postdoctoral fellowship program focused on harnessing the power of interdisciplinary science for the public benefit.

The Harvard winners include graduate students Kevin Zhao, Bryan Wilder, and Jenelle Wallace.

Zhao is Ph.D. candidate in chemistry and chemical biology in the lab of Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences David R. Liu at the Broad Institute. His research focuses on developing precision genome editing technologies that are used in a variety of applications such as precision genetic medicine and agriculture. Wilder is a Ph.D. candidate at the John A. Paulson School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences studies optimization, social networks, and machine learning. Wallace is researcher at the Stevens Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital and The Stanley Center at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She is interested in neural-immune interactions in adult plasticity.

The award is funded by Schmidt Future, a philanthropic initiative co-founded by Eric and Wendy Schmid, and the Rhodes Trust, that aims to equip the next generation of scientists and engineers to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries. Fellows are supported for at least one and up to two years with a $100,000 per year stipend.

The launched in 2017 focuses on funding interdisciplinary approaches to break down silos among scientific fields in order to solve the world’s biggest challenges and support our future leaders in STEM.

“The Schmidt Science Fellows are proving that bringing together brilliant people across disciplines is the only way to tackle the problems our world faces this century,” said Wendy Schmidt. “We could not be prouder of the fellows, who have already improved cancer diagnostics, advanced the way new drug therapies are delivered and brought life-saving, covid-fighting technologies to people around the globe. We can’t wait to see what the 2021 cohort will accomplish.”