Student From Port Jefferson Station Earns $250K Hertz Fellowship

PORT JEFFERSON STATION, NY — Hannah Lawrence, of Port Jefferson Station, was granted a Hertz Fellowship to support her research in protein imaging and drug developments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to a news release.

One of the most prestigious awards of its kind, the Hertz Fellowship is awarded annually by the Hertz Foundation to the United States' most innovative graduate students in science and technology who have the potential to solve the world's most urgent challenges. Lawrence is one of the only 16 graduate students given a Hertz Fellowship this year.

The Hertz Fellowship provides five years of graduate research funding, valued up to $250,000, the research freedom to pursue innovative ideas with real-world impact, development workshops, social networking opportunities, and lifelong professional mentoring and support from a community of more than 1,200 leaders in science and technology.

With support of the Hertz Fellowship, Lawrence plans to develop theoretical foundations for new algorithms at the interface of machine learning, data science, and signal processing, with potential impacts in drug development and other applications. She is currently a research analyst at the Center for Computational Mathematics of the Flatiron Institute in New York City, where she is developing symmetry-preserving neural nets for image processing in cryogenic electron microscopy, a widespread method for determining the 3-D structure of proteins.

"My work will touch diverse and high-impact areas of computational science," Lawrence said in the release. "I hope to solve problems with both theoretical depth and genuine downstream applications in fields such as protein imaging and drug developments."