Perry World House Announces 2025-26 Cohort of Graduate Fellows
Perry World House (PWH), the University of Pennsylvania’s home for global affairs, has selected twenty graduate students to form the 2025-2026 cohort of our Perry World House Graduate Fellows Program.
The Graduate Fellows Program cohort has been assembled following a highly-competitive selection process with the aim of pulling in graduate student expertise from all corners of the University’s graduate schools. The program brings into conversation and practice, viewpoints and expertise from a wide array of academic disciplines, with the aim of leveraging the practical academic skills shared among program participants to positively impact global policy wherever the careers of each graduate student take them.
“I am absolutely thrilled to take the helm in this inaugural year of Penn’s reinvigorated World House Graduate Fellows Program,” explains Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt, Perry World House’s Graduate Program Director, who is also a Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania with academic research and teaching appointments across the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Perry World House, and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
Dr. Schmitt brings his own multidisciplinary background to lead the Graduate Fellows Program, having received his Ph.D. in Experimental Physics from the University of Pennsylvania, before spending four years across two Presidential Administrations serving as European Energy Security Advisor at the U.S. Department of State. Following his time in government, he pursued experimental cosmology research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which required travel to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, and also testified before U.S. Congress on increasing Russia energy sanctions, resulting in him being sanctioned by the Russian Federation himself. Dr. Schmitt returned to Penn in 2023 to support the development of astrophysical and energy infrastructure for the Advanced Simons Observatory project in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile, while leading research and graduate instruction at the intersection of energy and national security, regionally focused across the Transatlantic space and East Asia.
“It is a fact that that subject matter expertise is no longer a ‘nice to have’ in the fields of foreign and national security policy – career tracks once dominated by generalist academic training – it is an absolute requirement,” argues Dr. Schmitt. “It is more vital than ever to put together groups of multidisciplinary experts around a single table to ask the questions needed to postulate solutions to societal grand challenges. Just a few examples include bringing scientists and technologists into the room to support policies for technology export controls or space security threats, medical experts to develop societal responses needed to combat emerging global pandemics, or integrating business and legal expertise to help forge future regulatory environments for emerging international policy challenges associated with the rise of artificial intelligence.”
Holding regular sessions with this distinguished student cohort around a single table at PWH is central to the spirit of critical academic exchange that forms the core of the Graduate Fellows Program. Throughout the academic year, Fellows have the opportunity to interact directly with senior practitioners in the fields of foreign policy and international security, ranging from discussions with current and former senior diplomatic officials, law enforcement professionals, and military leaders. Program sessions aim to provide instruction in key skills that students arriving from areas of study outside of “traditional” foreign policy can use to enhance their research and engagement in their own academic pursuits, while gaining exposure to pathways to participate in foreign policy and national security analysis in their postgraduate careers.
Sessions on open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis, foundations of international relations theory, and media training for national security topics are just some of the dynamic areas that are covered throughout the year. The program also provides Fellows with the opportunity to travel as a cohort to Washington, D.C. for meetings with U.S. Congressional Committees (such as Senate Foreign Relations Committee), federal government agencies (such as the U.S. Department of State and the Pentagon), and an array of national security and foreign policy-focused think tanks, while using Penn Washington as a base from which to conduct these meetings.
“Now, more than ever, we need our graduate students from advanced disciplines to enter the workforce following their time at Penn – whether it be in the public or private sectors – with an appreciation of just how much global impact their advanced work in the fields of science, technology, medicine, business, law, and beyond can have. At the same time, the program aims to ensure that these students have the tangible skills needed to operationalize their expertise gained in their studies to enhance the national security, moral standing, and economic health of the United States and its partners and allies around the world,” says Dr. Schmitt.