The rotors are tiny, about the size of a man's thumbnail. But if Peter Kunz has his way, they will someday lift miniature helicopters that can swoop through the eye of a hurricane or zip into a building with a hazardous spill. Small on-board sensors will report back to the rest of the world.
Building toy-size flying machines may sound like child's play, but Kunz is pushing the outer edge of human understanding of aerodynamics. A PhD candidate in the department of aeronautics and astronautics, he is able to do this research thanks to funding from a Stanford Graduate Fellowship. "If it hadn't come through, I wouldn't be here," Kunz says.
Stanford launched the fellowship program in 1997, when federal funding that supported many doctoral students seemed to be drying up. The idea is to lure top science, medical and engineering students and then allow them to choose their own mentors and research focus, free from concerns about where the money is coming from. Though federal funding never hit the low point many had expected, the fellowships have helped Stanford attract talent and give students the freedom to study what they want. "It has allowed us not to be so reactive to what is currently popular in Washington," says Charles Kruger, vice provost and dean of research and graduate policy.
The program's future was cemented with the conclusion of a three-year campaign to raise $200 million to support more than 330 fellowships. Kunz is one of the success stories. After earning an undergraduate degree and a master's from Penn State, he applied there and at Stanford to study for his PhD. But the Stanford department has few opportunities for teaching assistantships and little funding of its own for those entering at the PhD level. "It was a hard call -- to go to Stanford and go into debt, or go somewhere else," Kunz recalls. A few weeks after he received his acceptance letter, Kunz was offered the fellowship, which pays a $20,000 annual stipend and offsets tuition. From there, his studies took flight.
