Louis Lerman, PhD

Louis Lerman, Hertz Fellow, is a true champion of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. His generosity and imagination holds an honored place in the ongoing creation of the Hertz Fellows Community. As benefactor of the Hertz Fellows Fall Retreats, Louis also created and supports the Lerman Challenge, the Regional Get-Togethers, and the HertZigs. He sponsors a Named Fellowship in honor of his father, Dr. George Lerman.

Louis’s generosity is matched by the important bridge building he brings to science, technology, business, and art. During his Hertz Fellowship at Stanford he focused on the interdisciplinary: high-energy physics and multi-scale self-organizing systems. His development of the flotilla concept for low-earth orbiting unmanned space systems led to his involvement with a start-up, Insitu, which has become a major force in autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles. Louis’s highly publicized Bubble Hypothesis on the origin of life is now in biology textbooks and is currently being applied to the search for life on Mars. Lerman’s application of self-organizing systems to urban land development helped his partnership become the largest land developer in Nevada, which in turn built the best-selling communities in the entire U.S. Currently, applications at the nanoscale guide his newest start-up, QuarkStar, with more than 300 patent applications in process in solid-state lighting.