The winners of the 2020 Bodenheimer Fellowship in the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science have been announced. This year’s EECS student recipients of this honor are Daniel Burns, Ian Schomer and Roy Tan.
2020 Bodenheimer Fellowship winner Ian Schomer
The Bodenheimer Fellowships, valued at $10,000 per year per person, are combined with GTA/GRA positions bringing the total package to more than $43,000 per year. The fellowships are awarded to superior or deserving EECS graduates from UT to encourage them to stay on for graduate school at UT. These students, who often have GPAs of 3.8 or above, are being recruited with similar offers from the very best graduate programs in the country and these fellowships allow us to make them competitive offers.
One of the winners, Ian Schomer, is a graduate electrical engineering student and Graduate Teaching Assistant. “I was born and raised in Knoxville, so being a recipient of the Bodenheimer Fellowship has been yet another confirmation that I don’t have to travel far from home to receive a great electrical engineering degree with unmatched financial support,” Schomer said. “Moreover, as a newlywed whose spouse has been financially impacted by COVID-19, this news could not have come at a better time!”
2020 Bodenheimer Fellowship winner Daniel Burns
Daniel Burns is another winner. “The Fellowship is quite an honor and I’m humbled to be a part of Dr. Bodenheimer’s legacy at the University,” Burns said. “I was born in Tennessee and have spent the majority of my life here, so I’m incredibly proud and grateful that folks are reinvesting in the education of our state. The primary mission of the University is to improve the quality of life in Tennessee (in addition to the nation and world) through education and I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity and support to continue my education at UTK and then contribute to our Tennessee community. I’m just ecstatic that the people involved in the Fellowship (Dr. Bodenheimer, Mr. Crabtree, and all others) believe in the students from the department and generous enough to support our education make Tennessee a better place.”
2020 Bodenheimer Fellowship winner Roy Tan
Roy Tan is the third of this year’s winners. “Being chosen for the Bodenheimer Fellowship is an honor as I know that those chosen before me were people with great minds and steadfast determination,” Tan said. “I strive to follow in their footsteps as someone who will be proud to call themselves a UT graduate and a Bodenheimer Fellow.”
Each student may receive the fellowship for up to five semesters while pursuing the MS degree and an additional ten semesters when pursuing the PhD degree on a full-time basis.
The Bodenheimer Fellowships were established in honor of Robert E. Bodenheimer who taught ECE courses at UT for nearly forty years prior to his retirement. The primary benefactor has been one of his students, Michael C. Crabtree, who received his BS in 1973 and MS in 1975 from UT, both in electrical engineering. Crabtree was one of the founders of CTI (Siemens) Molecular Imaging, Inc.
An applicant must be a US citizen with preference given for residents of the State of Tennessee and be accepted or enrolled as a full-time student in the EECS graduate program at UT with a superior academic record and/or financial need. Applications are due each January with award offers made in March for students beginning (or continuing) their programs in the summer or fall or the next spring terms. The selection committee consists of Crabtree, professors Blalock, Bouldin, Rose, and Bodenheimer & Dr. Marc Bodenheimer (MD).