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Contact: Ralph
Derickson
John
H. “Jack” Challis
Ryan
Gabbard
Both
National Merit Scholars, Challis and Gabbard reside
on the same floor in Boyd Hall, an Honors Program
residence hall at UK, and share the presidency
of the UK math club. They also have been in national
mathematics competitions together while they were
undergraduate students.
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LEXINGTON,
Ky. (April 14, 2004) -- Two
University of Kentucky students who will graduate
in May have been awarded National Science Foundation
(NSF) grants to pursue graduate studies.
John
H. “Jack” Challis of Erlanger and Ryan
Gabbard of Louisville, both UK Singletary Scholars,
will each receive $30,000 per year in NSF grants
for three years of graduate studies. Additionally,
NSF will pay their tuition and fees at the institutions
where they study.
Challis,
who also received $7,500 from the Barry M. Goldwater
Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program
in his junior year at UK, will receive a bachelor’s
degree in physics and a bachelor’s degree
in mathematics from the College of Arts and Sciences
during UK’s 137th Commencement set for Saturday,
May 8, in Rupp Arena. He will pursue a doctorate
in physics from Yale beginning this fall.
Gabbard,
will receive a bachelor’s degree in mathematics
and a second degree in linguistics from the College
of Arts and Sciences at the May graduation ceremony.
He will study computer science at the University
of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, this fall.
Challis,
who was described by UK physics professor Ganpathy
Murthy as “the best undergraduate student
I've ever seen – ever,” said he anticipates
a career in academia after earning his doctorate.
He said he chose Yale for graduate studies because “there
is a physics professor there, Steve Girvin, whose
work I greatly admire.”
Challis,
the son of Richard and Emily Challis and a graduate
of Villa Madonna Academy in Villa Hills, Ky., has
current research interests in theoretical physics
and quantum computing. “I'm interested in
building a simple quantum computer,” he said.
Both
National Merit Scholars, Challis and Gabbard reside
on the same floor in Boyd Hall, an Honors Program
residence hall at UK, and share the presidency
of the UK math club. They also have been in national
mathematics competitions together while they were
undergraduate students.
Gabbard,
a graduate of Jefferson County’s duPont Manual
High School, is the son of Melinda and Gary Gabbard
of Louisville. He will study computational linguistics
at the University of Pennsylvania. This field,
he said, is about “how statistics can be
combined with linguistics to make computers learn
about human language.”
Jerzy
Jaromczyk, one of Gabbard’s professors, said
Gabbard led UK’s computer science programming
team to last year’s finals in the Association
for Computing Machinery International Collegiate
Programming Competition in Beverly Hills, Calif.,
to a 10th place finish. “Ryan’s contributions
to the team have been on all the levels starting
from diligent and intensive practices, to being
an outstanding problem solver and extremely efficient
programmer,” Jaromczyk added.
Another
of Gabbard’s professors, Gregory Stump, professor
of English and linguistics, said, “He is
capable and energetic, extremely hard working and
passionate about language and how it works.”
Gabbard
said he found that he liked both computers and
linguistics while studying at UK, “and I
found a way to combine the two.” He served
an internship last year with Microsoft in Redmond
near Seattle, Washington, and worked on projects
related to making computers extract desired information
and filter out uninteresting material from documents
and search engine results.
Gabbard
said he chose to attend UK because “the university
has really good teachers and is really good at
getting undergraduate students involved in research.”
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