The Thomas G. Mason Interdisciplinary Physics Fund was established in December 2000 by Thomas G. Mason (BS, 1989), now a professor in the Departments of Chemistry/Biochemistry and Physics/Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition, Dr. Mason is a member of UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute.
The Mason Fund at the University of Maryland exposes talented doctoral students in the Department of Physics to problems and approaches in non-physics disciplines through summer interaction with professors in other departments.
In academic year 2021-22, the Mason Fund recipient was Elizabeth Bennewitz, a JQI and QuICS student who was a finalist for a Hertz Fellowship and the recipient of a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.