Jack Peltier Wins NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Physics Major Jack Peltier is one of 12 UT students and alumni to win a prestigious 2026 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. These competitive honors go to outstanding students pursuing graduate education in science, engineering, math and technology. Peltier is from Franklin, Tennessee, and graduated with the spring 2026 class. He will begin graduate studies at Brown University this fall.
As a freshman Peltier started making 3D-printed parts for Professor Robert Grzywacz’s group in experimental nuclear physics. His sophomore year he added data analysis to his portfolio. His work analyzing the beta-delayed neutron emission of Fluorine 25 led to a paper in Physics Letters B, where he was first author. (This project is the basis of his NSF Fellowship.) Peltier completed similar studies for Cesium 147-149 and Niobium 109-111.
“Working in his (Professor Grzywacz’s) lab has been a fantastic experience,” Peltier said. “I have had nearly complete freedom over what I am investigating at any point, without the limitations of a lack of experimental data, etc., while also receiving mentorship about the most effective ways to extract interesting results. I believe in his lab I have received the right balance of mentorship and freedom in my research to situate myself in researching what projects I find most interesting while also making an impact on the field.”
He added that one of his favorite undergraduate memories was going whitewater rafting with the Grzywacz group.
Peltier’s research experience also includes a summer working at Fermilab, testing a protype detector for the Compact Muon Solenoid outer tracker while working with Assistant Professor Larry Lee. In tandem with his physics contributions, Peltier put his second major in math to work as well. As a sophomore he joined Professor Tuoc Phan’s group, where he has focused on regularity theory for nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations. He’ll continue this work at Brown in the applied math program.
The NSF Fellowship is the latest in a string of honors for Peltier. In 2025 he won a Barry Goldwater Scholarship. In 2025 he won the physics department’s Robert Talley Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research, while this spring he won the James W. McConnell Award for Academic Excellence.
Peltier’s NSF Fellowship is the fifth to go to a UT Physics student or graduate in the past seven years. Bachelor’s graduates Lindsey Hessler and James Rogers were also honorable mentions in this year’s cohort.