Sergey Kryazhimskiy Awarded Hellman Fellowship

August 28, 2018

By Mario Aguilera

Division of Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Sergey Kryazhimskiy has been awarded a Hellman Fellowship for 2018-2019. He is one of 11 UC San Diego faculty members to receive the award, which is designed to provide financial support to promising early career faculty who show a capacity for distinction in their research and creative activities.

Hellman awards, at a maximum of $50,000, are intended as one-time support funding for activities that will enhance the individual’s progress towards tenure.

Kryazhimskiy, a member of the division’s Section of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, studies evolution in microbes. According to Kryazhimskiy, many organisms are adapting to the ongoing changes in the environment, and some microbes adapt especially rapidly. Yet current evolutionary theory cannot predict how evolution will unfold.

As a part of the Hellman fellowship, Kryazhimskiy’s and members of his team will build upon a new understanding of bacterial physiology and existing evolutionary theory. Their goal is to develop a new model for predicting bacterial adaptation.

If the project is successful, Kryazhimskiy believes, “we may be able to derive new statistical laws for predicting the evolution of microbial populations.”

The Hellman Fellowship was established at UC San Diego in 1995 through the generosity of Chris Hellman and the late Warren Hellman. The full list of 2018-2019 Hellman fellows is available here.