MCB Assistant Professor Doeke Hekstra has been chosen as a recipient of the George W. Merck Fellowship, an award that provides funding to promising tenure-track Harvard professors. Hekstra’s lab will receive $460,000 in funding over two years. The George W. Merck Fellowships are made possible by the George W. Merck Fund of the New York Community Trust.
“I greatly appreciate the confidence shown by the Merck Foundation in our work,” Hekstra says.
Candidates for the George W. Merck Fellowship are nominated by other faculty members. The FAS Dean of Science makes the final decision based on the research’s potential to yield impact, innovation, and advancements in human knowledge.
The funds will support Hekstra’s work on the mechanics of proteins and other biomolecules. “I take this award as an encouragement to fully develop a technique to probe the inner workings of biomolecules using strong electric fields,” Hekstra says. “Like in engineering, it is ultimately critical to understand how forces and energy flow through molecular structures, and not just to see their largest motions. May this Merck Fellowship go a long way to making such understanding a reality!”
Doeke Hekstra faculty profile
by Diana Crow
