Benet Academy alum receives Department of Energy graduate fellowship

A former Benet Academy student is attending graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign this fall on a U.S. Department of Energy fellowship.

Edward Hutter, a former Geneva resident, is one of fewer than 6 percent of applicants to receive the DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (DOE CSGF). Hutter, a 2013 Benet graduate, is studying toward a doctoral degree in Computer Science.

The fellowship, administered by the Krell Institute of Ames, Iowa, is funded by the DOE's Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Each year, the program grants fellowships to support doctoral students whose education and research focus on using high-performance computers to solve complex science and engineering problems of national importance. Since it was launched in 1991, the DOE CSGF has supported 456 students at more than 65 universities.

DOE CSGF students receive full tuition and fees plus an annual stipend and academic allowance, renewable for up to four years. In return, recipients must complete courses in a scientific or engineering discipline plus computer science and applied mathematics. They also must perform a three-month research practicum at one of 21 DOE laboratories or sites across the country.

Hutter joins a group of 25 first-year fellows in 2018, bringing the total number of current DOE CSGF recipients to 84 students in 21 states.

The fellowship and related practicum experiences are effective workforce recruitment tools for the national laboratories. Nearly a quarter of all DOE CSGF alumni currently work or have worked in a DOE lab setting. Otherspursue careers in academia, industry or government, where they introduce and advocate for computational science as a tool for discovery.

For more information on the DOE CSGF, contact the Krell Institute at (515) 956-3696 or visit www.krellinst.org/csgf.