K2I Announces Recipients of Graduate Fellowships 

Five students, four of them in the George R. Brown School of Engineering, have received graduate fellowships to continue their studies and research.

“These fellowships are highly sought after and often come with opportunities for student internships at the companies,” said Jan Odegard, executive director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology at Rice University.

Receiving the Ken Kennedy - Cray Inc. Graduate Fellowship  is:

Yenny Chandra, a third-year graduate student in civil and environmental engineering (adviser, assistant professor Ilinca Stanciulescu).Herresearch focuses on developing numerical techniques for simulating loss of stability in aerospace structures.

“The Ken Kennedy-Cray Graduate Fellowship fund was established in 2007 as a tribute to both Ken’s long-time to service to Cray as a member of our Board of Directors,” said Peter Ungaro, Cray president and CEO, “and his pioneering work in compilers and parallel programming models. Ken helped move our industry forward and we are very excited that this award is providing continued support for deserving students working in these same important areas of study.”

Receiving the Rice University Computer Science Club and CSters - Schlumberger Fellowship  is:

Xu Liu, a second-year graduate student in computer science (adviser, professor John Mellor-Crummey), who research focuses on high-performance computing, especially performance analysis for large parallel scientific programs using novel software and hardware techniques.

Receiving the Rice University IEEE Student Chapter and Women Excel  ‐  Schlumberger Fellowship  is:

Corina Serediuc, a fourth-year graduate student in electrical and computer engineering (adviser, professor Behnaam Aazhang) who researches cooperative wireless communications.

“The selection process is quite rigorous,” said Brian Clark, a current Schlumberger Fellow. “Schlumberger has been pleased to provide fellowships to top students over the past decade. We value our relationship with Rice University, as it is one of the top science and engineering schools in the country.”

Awarded BP High Performance Computing Graduate Fellowships  are:

Rajesh Gandham, a second-year graduate student in computational and applied mathematics (adviser, associate professor Tim Warburton). His research focuses on developing algorithms to solve partial differential equations of industrial scale, using parallel architectures such as graphic processing units.

Kaijian Liu, a sixth-year graduate student in earth science (adviser, professor Alan Levander).His research in computational seismology focuses on teleseismic imaging/inversion of the geological structure beneath the western United States.

“BP has been engaged with the Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice in a number of ways, including development of HPC education and training material, providing equipment to computer labs and co-hosting workshops focused on high performance computing in the industry,” said Odegard. “The fellowships not only help our students but are instrumental in highlighting the HPC career opportunities in the industry.”