Chemistry Ph.D. candidate and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jason Q.L. Williams (P. Weiss group) is named a Tillman Scholar for the class of 2025.
Williams is among an elite group of only 43 national recipients selected from universities across the country for the 2025 Class of Tillman Scholars. In recognition of their service, leadership and potential, the newly selected class will receive scholarship funding to pursue higher education and continue their service in the fields of medicine, law, business, policy, technology, education and the arts.
Williams will be attending the National Tillman Scholar Leadership Summit at Loyola University in Chicago from July 17 to July 20, 2025.
From the 2025 Tillman Scholar announcement:
Jason Williams
Marine Corps University of California – Los Angeles PHD, Chemistry
“As a Marine, I protected lives; as a scientist, I develop innovations that improve them.”
Jason Williams was inspired to serve his country after 9/11, enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps as a Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Specialist. Deployed twice to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom, he gained a profound appreciation for discipline, resilience, and teamwork. After four years of service, he left the military determined to pursue higher education—an ambitious goal for someone who had graduated from a continuation school. Despite multiple setbacks and attending ten different colleges, he earned a B.S. in Chemistry from California State University Dominguez Hills in 2020 after discovering his passion for plant natural products research under the mentorship of Dr. Patrick Still and Dr. Erin McCauley.
Now a Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry at UCLA, Williams merges ancestral botanical wisdom, nanotechnology, and sustainable synthetic methods to reimagine raw materials for the health and wellness industry. He specializes in the green synthesis of metal and metal-oxide nanocomposites using extracts from African medicinal plants for their sun-protective, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant effects.
Williams leads the Veterans in STEM program at UCLA, mentoring veteran students from UCLA and community colleges in Los Angeles and Orange County. Vets in STEM provides guidance through mentorship, financial support, and a community of like-minded veterans interested in STEM research. Williams also founded Elements of Equity, which provides financial support to non-traditional undergraduate students, such as veterans, and offers mentorship along their path to a career in STEM. In 2025, Jason was inducted into the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society for his lifelong dedication to scholarship, leadership, and service to others.
About Jason Williams
Jason Williams’ interdisciplinary work bridges ancestral knowledge with nanotechnology through eco-conscious material science. Under the mentorship of Professor Paul S. Weiss, he develops green synthesis methodologies utilizing Southern African plants used in traditional medicine to create metal-oxide nanocomposites for multimodal skin therapeutic agents.
A nontraditional scholar, Williams enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps after high school, serving as a Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Specialist with two deployments to Iraq. His undergraduate academic journey—marked by perseverance through eight community colleges—culminated in a B.S. in Chemistry from Cal State Dominguez Hills in 2021. At UCLA, he has been awarded the Center for Diversity in Science Early Career Fellowship for his scholarly and community contributions. Earlier this year, Williams was one of six outstanding scholars invited to join the UCLA chapter of the national Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society (BGHS).
Williams is also very active in outreach to veterans and their families. He is the lead facilitator of UCLA’s Veterans in STEM program, and currently mentors five undergraduate students. Williams is currently looking for UCLA faculty to co-sponsor veteran mentees from Veterans in STEM.
Williams also founded Elements of Equity (EoE), a nonprofit organization that provides paid research internships to underrepresented students. EoE targets talented individuals who may not have high GPAs but possess strong potential and a passion for science. By partnering with businesses, EoE offers practical lab training, bridging the gap between talent and opportunity and helping students build competitive graduate school applications. EoE was recently selected as a semi-finalist in Pharrell Williams’ Black Ambition Prize competition, where Williams’ team, DrLoveCare.com, is competing for up to $1 million in funding.
Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penjen@g.ucla.edu.
