“I have to immediately become an expert on whatever issue comes up,” says Donald Engel, this year’s congressional fellow for the American Physical Society (APS). Engel is working as a staffer for Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ). “I work on math and science education, and on Einstein’s alley”—a project to promote science and technology industry in New Jersey, he says. Engel, who last spring completed his PhD on computational protein design at the University of Pennsylvania, first heard about the fellowships as a college freshman in a course on careers in physics. “It has been in my head that I wanted to apply since then,” he says.
Engel is one of about 140 new science and technology policy fellows spending a year in the offices of the US Congress and in executive branch agencies through a program organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The American Institute of...
