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April 29, 2015

Engineering student awarded national computational science fellowship

Zane Crawford, an Honors College senior majoring in electrical engineering, has earned a Computational Science Graduate Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The fellowship is administered by the Krell Institute and supports approximately 70 students who are pursuing doctoral degrees in fields that use high-performance computing to solve complex science and engineering problems. It was established in 1991 to address the shortage of computational scientists in the United States.

The program includes an annual stipend of $36,000, full tuition and fees, an academic allowance and a 12-week practicum at a DOE site with access to DOE supercomputers.

Crawford was also awarded a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and a Department of Defense Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation Graduate Fellowship, but declined both in favor of the Computational Science Graduate Fellowship.

He plans to graduate in May with his bachelor’s degree and then continue at Michigan State University in pursuit of his doctorate with a research focus on computational electromagnetics.

“I am overjoyed at the opportunity to focus on research topics that truly interest me, thanks to the support of a fellowship,” Crawford said. “Furthermore, I see these awards as not just recognition of my accomplishments and my potential for future success, but recognition and a reflection of the people and communities that have inspired me and molded me into the person I am today.”

Crawford is originally from West Bloomfield, Michigan, graduating from Walled Lake Central High School. He’s a member of the Honors College Dean’s Advisory Council, Honors College Programming Board, Honors Students Actively Recruiting (H-STAR), the electrical honors society Tau Beta Pi and the electrical engineering society IEEE - Eta Kappa Nu.

He’s presented at the Acoustics Society of America and IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, as well as participated in the Mid-Michigan Symposium for Undergraduate Research Experience and Graduate Research Symposium. Crawford’s research has focused on surface representations for electromagnetic scattering surfaces and on integration methods for an electromagnetic equation solver acceleration method.

The National and International Fellowship and Scholarship Office at MSU, administered by the Honors College, helps interested undergraduate and graduate students to pursue major national and international opportunities by providing information and direct support throughout the competitive application processes.