TAMEST Recognizes Lyda Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies with Kay Bailey Hutchison Distinguished Service Award

The Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology announced that Lyda Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies are this year’s recipients of its Kay Bailey Hutchison Distinguished Service Award.

TAMEST said it’s recognizing Hill—a Dallas businesswoman and philanthropist and the granddaughter of oil magnate H.L. Hunt—as well as her team for empowering and enabling groundbreaking research in science and nature that profoundly impacts society. Hill, who’s said she believes science can solve many of the world’s most challenging issues, has chosen to donate all of her estate to philanthropy and scientific research.

Aligned with that mission, Hill is committed to advancing science and public health research in Texas, as shown through her philanthropic investments in the American Cancer Society’s HPV Cancer Free Texas campaign, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, Texas Biomedical Research Institute, UT Southwestern Medical Center, and many others.

TAMEST said it’s proud to honor Hill and her charitable-giving organization for their support of innovation and research in Texas. “We share their conviction that ‘Science is the Answer’ to the great challenges and questions of our time, and Lyda Hill and her team are incredibly deserving recipients of this honor and recognition,” TAMEST Board President Brendan Lee, of Baylor College of Medicine, said in a statement.

Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies also support scientific research and public health efforts outside of Texas. A notable recent example of that: her support of Dr. David Baker’s protein design research at the University of Washington, which earned Baker the 2024 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

“We’re thrilled to accept the Kay Bailey Hutchison Distinguished Service Award from TAMEST and look forward to further collaborations,” Hill said in a statement.

The Hill Prizes reward Texas research excellence

In 2023, Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies launched a new prize for scientific research in Texas, the Hill Prizes, and chose TAMEST to administer the prize program.

TAMEST said the Hill Prizes recognize and advance top Texas innovators and researchers whose work could significantly impact science and society. The first year of the prizes saw $2.5 million in funding from Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies to back high-risk, high-reward ideas that demonstrated significant potential for real-world impact in five areas: medicine, engineering, biological sciences, physical sciences, and technology innovation.

According to TAMEST, the success of the program’s first year led Hill to commit more than $10 million in additional funding to continue the prize program for the next three years, including the addition of a new prize in the category of Public Health, resulting in six prizes per year of $500,000 each.

Hill also committed to fund at least $1 million in discretionary research funding to be allocated by Lyda Hill Philanthropies on an ad hoc basis to highly ranked applicants, thus far including investigators at Baylor College of Medicine, Southern Methodist University, and UT Southwestern Medical Center.

“Lyda Hill and her team are building a robust base for science in Texas, and I applaud their creative approach to accelerating innovation,” Hutchison, TAMEST honorary chair, former U.S. senator, and former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in a statement. “The Hill Prizes are significant, and Lyda is taking huge steps to ensure deserving research is being funded in our state. Research is the seed that produces growth in the economy, so rewarding the best science in Texas keeps the creativity in Texas.”

Support for Pegasus Park campus

Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies also have supported Pegasus Park in Dallas, a 26-acre campus of life science labs, offices, and development space that enables startups, nonprofits, and academics to collaborate and thrive.

The campus houses innovative departments of multiple North Texas higher education institutions and the first institutional-quality lab space in the region, which has helped strengthen North Texas’ role as a globally recognized center for life science innovation.

Last year, a consortium of Texas science, business, and healthcare leaders came together to attract to Pegasus Park the new federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to develop its Customer Experience Hub, one of three ARPA-H hubs in the nation.

The award’s ninth recipients so far

TAMEST will officially present the award to Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies at the opening reception of the TAMEST 2025 Annual Conference: Transformational Breakthroughs in Irving on Feb. 4.

TAMEST said it established the Kay Bailey Hutchison Distinguished Service Award in 2013 to recognize individuals and organizations that have demonstrated outstanding leadership in furthering TAMEST’s mission to bring together the state’s brightest minds in medicine, engineering, science, and technology to foster collaboration and to advance research, innovation, and business in Texas.

Hill and Lyda Hill Philanthropies are the ninth recipients of the award.

Previous recipients were The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (2024); Dr. John L. Junkins and the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study, Texas A&M University (2022); The Office of the President, The University of Texas at Austin (2020); Exxon Mobil Corporation (2017); Larry Faulkner and Kenneth Jastrow (2016); Peter O’Donnell Jr. (2014); and The Honorable Kay Bailey Hutchison (2013).