Congressional Science and Engineering Fellows Named

Congressional Science and Engineering Fellows Named The Optical Society of America (OSA), SPIE and the Materials Research Society (MRS) have selected 2007-2008 Congressional Science and Engineering Fellows: Audrey Ellerbee, a PhD candidate at Duke University, will serve as the OSA/SPIE Congressional Fellow, and Alicia Jackson, a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will be the OSA/MRS Congressional Fellow. Each will serve one-year terms working as special legislative assistants for congressional staffs in Washington, D.C., beginning in September, after an intensive orientation facilitated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for congressional and executive branch fellows from more than two dozen scientific societies. Ellerbee, who will receive her PhD in the next few months, has a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Princeton University. At present, she is working on a new optical technology to study embryonic heart development in small animals. She serves on numerous governing committees at Duke and recently won the Golden Torch Award for Graduate Student of the Year from the National Society of Black Engineers. Jackson, who will receive her PhD next month, will spend this summer at the National Academies of Science as a Christine Mirzyan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow working with the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy on the project, “Ensuring the Utility and Integrity of Research Data in a Digital Era.”