For National Mentoring Month, the Hertz Foundation celebrates a tradition that runs deeper than awards or academic achievement—mentoring relationships that transform careers and lives. This year carries special significance: 2025 Nobel Prize winners Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell have both credited the late Hertz Fellow David Galas, former board chair, as a pivotal mentor who empowered them to pursue the “gene hunt” that eventually redefined our understanding of immune tolerance.

When doctoral researchers from the nation’s leading applied sciences fellowship program step into a high school classroom, the distance between frontier research and student curiosity narrows. Questions sharpen, ideas spark, and advanced scientific concepts become tangible. This was the vision for a collaboration between the Hertz Foundation and the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy (DPEA) in Goleta, California.

Launched in 2023, the collaboration connected Hertz Fellows with students enrolled in one of California’s most innovative STEM academies. Together, the two organizations are creating opportunities that expose students to advanced research while strengthening Fellows’ ability to communicate complex ideas beyond academic settings.