Falls Church resident Matt Jones, an aerospeace and ocean engineering major in Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, was one of three students in Tech’s College of Engineering named 2015 Rolls-Royce Doctoral Students.

Jones, Christina DiMarino or Yorktown Heights, NY and Austin Scherbarth of West Chester, Ohio will receive an annual stipend of $30,000, full tuition and fees, health insurance and an annual travel budget of $2,500.

Jones earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech and is expected to receive his Ph.D. in May of 2018. He is working with his adviser Dr. Eric Paterson, the Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor of Marine Propulsion and department head of aerospace and ocean engineering, on the investigation of environmental forces on oceanic boundary-free shear flow physics. Jones is also studying specific features of the Joubert submarine that has a fully rotating propeller. He is the co-author of three technical publications.