Fellowship honors Silicon Valley pioneer and Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore
Today, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation named five fellows who will each receive $825,000 to further the development of new tools and technologies that promise to accelerate progress in the foundation’s areas of interest: scientific discovery, environmental conservation and patient care. The fellowships honor our visionary co-founder, Gordon Moore.
The 2021 Moore Inventor Fellows are:
Gozde Durmus, Ph.D., Stanford University School of Medicine
Shyam Gollakota, Ph.D., University of Washington
Marta Hatzell, Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology
Max Shulaker, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David Van Valen, M.D., Ph.D., Caltech
“Bold ideas can change the world,” said Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D. “These young inventors have compelling projects that, if successful, will make a real difference. Providing them with the time and resources they need to pursue these aims is a great investment in the future.”
While their backgrounds and fields vary, the five fellows share a common passion for transformative ideas. The new cohort propose creating a portable laboratory platform to measure antibiotic sensitivity in harmful microbes; small-scale deployable wireless sensors to detect conservation challenges; a system to convert air into a liquid ammonia-based fertilizer; an electronic chip to improve hospital diagnoses; and new methods to track multi-color spatial patterns in living cells.
The $825,000 award supporting these projects includes $675,000 over three years from the foundation and $50,000 per year from their home institution. The inventors will also become part of a network of other awardees and will receive additional guidance from Activate.org, which helps bridge the gap between laboratory research and the market.
“We cannot know in advance that an invention we support will change the world.” said Robert Kirshner, Ph.D., chief program officer for science at the Moore Foundation. “Yet these inventors and their ideas show great promise in areas our foundation supports.”
Launched in 2016 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Moore’s Law, the revolutionary prediction that anticipated the exponential growth of computing power, the fellowship embraces the spirit of Gordon Moore’s passion for science and honors his penchant for inventing. To nurture the next generation of scientist-inventors, the foundation plans to name a total of fifty Moore Inventor Fellows – five fellows per year for ten years – allocating nearly $34 million to their innovative projects.
This year, the foundation received nearly 200 nominations from 123 eligible institutions. In addition to the five selected fellows, five additional finalists received $25,000 each. Nominations for the seventh cohort to be announced in 2022 are open through December 13, 2021. To determine eligibility and learn more about the application process, please visit moore.org/inventors or email inventors@moore.org.
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