Physics grad student named Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow

June 12, 2015

Physics graduate student Jeremy W. Ward, who successfully defended his thesis in April, has been selected as the 2015-2016 MRS/TMS Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow.

Ward’s thesis, “Enhancing the Electrical Performance of Organic Field-Effect Transistors Through Interface Engineering,” was completed under the direction of assistant professor of physics Oana Jurchescu.

“This is a wonderful accomplishment for Jeremy and very well deserved. Jeremy was an excellent graduate student and I owe him much of the success of my newly established research program,” Jurchescu said. “In addition, for the last three years of his graduate studies he was supported by a National Science Foundation fellowship, a highly selective honor given to less than 10 percent of the applicants.”

Ward was selected to serve a one-year term working as a special legislative assistant on the staff of a member of Congress or congressional committee by The Materials Research Society (MRS) and The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS).

He will begin his fellowship in early September in Washington, D.C.

“Science, to me, is more than the culmination of facts and equations,” said Ward. “It is the combination of those, with the ability to view a problem from a variety of perspectives and then use those perspectives to generate creative solutions.”

The purpose of the Congressional Fellowships program is to bring technical and scientific backgrounds and external perspectives to the decision-making process in Congress.