Stanford graduate students Jackson Powell and Hannah Barsouk are among 19 recipients of this year’s Hertz Fellowship in the applied sciences, engineering, and mathematics.

Awarded annually by the Hertz Foundation, the fellowship provides up to five years of financial support to doctoral students. This year’s fellows are pursuing research in a wide range of disciplines, including astrophysics, quantum chemistry, robotics, plant science, and neuroscience.

Jackson Powell is a second-year MD-PhD student studying the brain through cross-human-mouse research in the Deisseroth Lab and Human Neural Circuitry program.

Powell’s research aims to better understand fundamental principles about the brain and drive future treatments. He plans to become a neurosurgeon and hopes his work can bridge basic neuroscience and clinical care.

Born in Tallahassee, Florida, Powell earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in the Vagelos Molecular Life Sciences program. As an undergraduate, he worked in the Song Lab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, studying neural regeneration.

Hannah Barsouk is a first-year PhD student in biochemistry and a chemical-biology interface (CBI) trainee interested in developing RNA-based technologies to engineer biological systems.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Barsouk graduated from Yale University with joint bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biophysics and biochemistry. In the laboratory of Ronald Breaker, Barsouk worked on projects uncovering novel functions for bacterial noncoding RNAs in metabolite sensing and stress response.

Barsouk is committed to teaching and outreach, having served as an intern with New Haven Public Schools and as head undergraduate teaching assistant for four semesters of biochemistry.