UF physicist receives State Department fellowship in Washington, D. C.

March 27, 2006

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida physicist has received an American Institute of Physics (AIP) Fellowship at the State Department in Washington, D. C.

James W. Dufty will serve a one-year term that begins Sept. 1.

“The AIP State Department Fellowship is an honor and an opportunity for me,” said Dufty, whose general area of research is statistical mechanics — the theory of macroscopic material properties based on the fundamental laws governing their microscopic constituents. The diverse materials of interest include plasmas, glasses and grains.

As a fellow, Dufty will choose an assignment designed to broaden the reach and visibility of scientific expertise within the State Department.

“[The Fellowship] is also a rare opportunity for me to observe and learn the process by which such difficult decisions are made and to influence some of them during my tenure,” he said. “I am honored by the expectation of my peers that I can reflect the value and expertise of scientists in the quite different forum of political policy formation.”

Through the development of the State Department Fellowship program in 2001, the American Institute of Physics became the first scientific society to financially support one scientist annually to work in a bureau or office of the State Department, providing scientific expertise to those who make the nation’s foreign policy.

Now entering its fourth year, the fellowship program is a demonstrated success, receiving not only public praise from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and other State Department officials, but supplemental funding from the State Department, enabling six fellows to participate in the program during its first three years, according to the State Department Science Fellowship Web site.