Two Caltech-Affiliated Students Named 2026 Hertz Fellows

On May 6, the Hertz Foundation announced this year's cohort of 19 Hertz Fellows. Among them are fourth-year undergraduate Sam Foxman and incoming graduate student Nikhil Seshadri.

The Hertz Fellowship is one of the nation's most competitive and prestigious doctoral fellowships in applied science, engineering, and mathematics. Awarded through a rigorous selection process, the fellowship provides recipients with up to five years of funding and lifelong professional support to pursue innovative research with broad societal impact.

"Being a Hertz Fellow means having an opportunity to explore diverse aspects of science with real-world impact that don't solely fall into the boundaries of one field," says Foxman, who studies computer science.

Foxman is set to graduate from Caltech this spring. During his time at the Institute, he has contributed to four NASA missions, with projects spanning spacecraft communications, mission operations, fluid dynamics, and artificial intelligence. Notably, he developed software capable of decoding laser-based space communications, technology that supported video communication with astronauts on the Artemis II mission.

"The most meaningful part of my research experience at Caltech has been getting to work with many amazing people, especially my mentors who helped me grow as a researcher and as a person," Foxman says. "I learned not just technical skills but also how to communicate with people across various backgrounds with different experiences."

Beyond aerospace, Foxman has pursued work in high-throughput chemistry, building both software and hardware tools such as electron diffraction databases and robotic systems for synthesizing small molecules. He will begin graduate studies in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University in fall 2026, where he plans to further explore spacecraft communication and navigation systems, artificial intelligence applications in space, and autonomous technologies.

This fall, Seshadri will begin his doctoral studies in chemistry at Caltech. Currently, he is a post-bachelor's student at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) working on fundamental problems in theoretical chemistry, chemical physics, and the physics and chemistry of materials.

Seshadri earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University with a double concentration in chemistry and physics, and computer science, with a secondary in mathematical sciences. At LANL, his research focuses on cavity quantum electrodynamics, specifically extending the Gutzwiller wavefunction method to account for nonlocal electron–electron and electron–photon interactions. This work aims to provide a unified framework for studying the interplay between these interactions, and how they can be tuned to discover new quantum phases and control the properties of materials.

Seshadri looks forward to experiencing Caltech's collaborative, research-intensive environment and is drawn to the strong alignment between his interests and the Institute's programs in chemistry.

"The field I would like to focus on is chemical physics," he says. "I chose this area because it applies fundamental principles of physics to elucidate chemical phenomena. Furthermore, it requires a sound knowledge of mathematics and computational skills. I'm interested in conducting computational and analytical research in these fields, with a particular emphasis on using first-principles approaches to tackle fundamental problems."

Foxman and Seshadri join a long tradition of Caltech-affiliated researchers recognized by the Hertz Foundation for their contributions to science and engineering. They also become part of a community of more than 1,300 Hertz Fellows, many of whom have gone on to leadership roles in academia, industry, and national laboratories.