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Schmidt Science Polymaths

The Polymath Program bets on intensely creative, recently-tenured professors with remarkable multidisciplinary track records, promising futures, and research ideas that cross field boundaries and could lead to impactful breakthroughs.

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Overview

The Schmidt Science Polymath program bets on recently-tenured professors with remarkable track records, promising futures, and a desire to explore interdisciplinary research. The program aims to encourage the best “polymath” scientists to expand their research portfolios by exploring a substantive disciplinary shift soon after achieving tenure.

The Program

The Polymath program will make long-term bets on recently-tenured professors with remarkable track records, promising futures, and a desire to explore interdisciplinary research. Each professor will be awarded $500,000 per year, paid through their institution, for up to five years to help support a research group through talent, such as three to four students or postdocs, and resources. These grants are intended to make possible the exploration of new ideas across disciplines, using emerging technologies to test risky theories that may not otherwise receive funding or support. They are not intended to relieve the researcher of pursuing other grants to continue their mainstream work, nor to be large enough to fully support a modern lab.

 

Read more about current Schmidt Science Polymaths and their work below.

2023 Grant Recipients

2022 Grant Recipients

2021 Grant Recipients

Jeff Gore

Dr. Jeff Gore is an Associate Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he uses his background in physics to gain critical insights into important biological questions. Dr. Gore uses quantitative thinking and a variety of tools from areas such as game theory, statistical physics, and behavioral ecology to solve problems in different fields. His research has moved from physics-based analysis of behavior of single biological molecules to research that elucidates behaviors in biological populations using a physicist’s taste for precise experiments and a biologist’s interest in real-world complexity. Dr. Gore’s lab is composed of an interdisciplinary group of scientists interested in collaboration that effectively combines experiments, theory, and modeling. Visit the Gore Lab website for more information on their work.

Jeff Gore headshot

Oded Rechavi

Dr. Oded Rechavi is a Professor of Neurobiology in the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University where he seeks to challenge fundamental long-held scientific dogmas. Prof. Rechavi’s primary research has focused on transgenerational inheritance and evolution where he introduced a paradigm shift in the field of inheritance not by identifying small RNAs that are generated in response to stress and are transmitted to subsequent generations. Outside of transgenerational biology, Dr. Rechavi has pioneered several new areas of interdisciplinary research. His work on the Dead Sea Scrolls used genome sequencing to help identify sources and to piece together tiny fragments of the scrolls by analyzing ancient DNA obtained from the animal skin parchment they were written on. His work on neuroeconomics uncovered neuronal mechanisms that underlie irrational decision making. Visit the Rechavi Lab website for more information on their work.

Oded Rechavi headshot
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Work we’re doing for science

We build networks of brilliant researchers at different career stages. We lead Virtual Institutes of Science to solve hard problems across locations and fields using modern tools.