Westporter Alex Siegenfeld Awarded $250K Graduate Studies Fellowship

Alex Siegenfeld of Westport has been awarded a graduate studies fellowship valued at $250,000 by the John Hertz Foundation.

The foundation announced the awards Monday. A total of 12 students from around the country are receiving the fellowships after 800 applied. The fellowship consists of five years of full tuition and a stipend, along with “mentoring and community support,” according to the foundation’s website.

Siegenfeld, an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will study physics, specifically ”condensed matter theory” for his PhD. When he was Siegenfeld represented the United States at the International Chemistry Olympiad, and won a gold medal there, according to Dan Woog’s 06880 blog.

On its website, the Hertz Foundation says it “gives fellows the freedom to innovate in their doctoral studies. They are not bound by traditional research funding restrictions or the funded projects of any faculty member. Hertz Fellows pursue their own ideas with complete financial independence, under the guidance of some of the country’s finest professors and mentors.”

Siegenfeld “is interested in combining chemical intuition with mathematical rigor to further the understanding of materials with exotic and useful properties,” the foundation said on its website.

“I want to bring chemical thinking into research models in physics so that we can better understand where on the periodic table to look for materials with desirable properties,” he said in a statement on the foundation website. This field can be very counterintuitive, and I find that interesting. I want to use my research to develop better tools and materials for society.”