Two Engineers Named Hellman Fellows
July 2, 2025 - Two engineering early career faculty -- Pim Oomen and Xizheng Wang -- have been chosen as 2025 Hellman Fellows. They will each receive $50,000 in support of their research. The Hellman Fellowship is bestowed annually to select assistant professors from the University of California campuses.
Oomen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is researching the impact of sex hormones on the heart. He is studying the difference in heart sizes between men and women, working to improve the understanding of how sex hormones play a part in heart health. By developing advanced computer models, Oomen will further researchers’ knowledge of hormone effects and how men and women respond differently to drugs. This transformative research will provide valuable insight into the need for different heart-related drugs and treatments.
Wang, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is conducting research on the accelerated discovery and electrified manufacturing of high entropy alloys (HEAs). She will use the fellowship support to further her work in the relatively new field of HEAs, which are advanced alloys, or metal mixtures that contain multiple metallic elements in near equal proportions. The compositional makeup of HEAs is ideal for extreme environments such as nuclear reactors and turbine engines. However, the vast compositional space of HEAs presents a significant challenge for selecting optimal alloy compositions. Wang’s research will help develop a powerful manufacturing platform capable of producing a wide range of HEAs with uniform element mixing, which will accelerate the materials discovery for extreme-condition applications.
The Hellman Fellowship program began in 1995 at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego and has since expanded organically to all UC universities and four private institutions. In 2020, after 25 years of funding the fellowships, the Hellman family created an endowment to allow the awards to continue in perpetuity across UC’s 10 campuses.
– Cassandra Nava
