Scholarship recipients in Computational Modeling and Data Analytics program honored at annual awards dinner
CMDA faculty/staff and scholarship award recipients. Photo by Melissa McKeown for Virginia Tech.
More than $65,000 was awarded to 24 students during the Computational Modeling and Data Analytics (CMDA) program’s annual scholarship dinner held April 25 at the Inn at Virginia Tech.
The largest group of award recipients were granted the Luther & Alice Hamlett Scholarship. Luther Hamlett, who died in 2016, graduated from Virginia Tech in 1945 with a bachelor’s degree in biology before earning his M.D. from the Medical College of Virginia. He and his wife, Alice, who passed away in 2008, were among the College of Science’s most generous donors, setting up — among other things — an endowed scholarship for students majoring in computational modeling and data analytics, which is part of the Academy of Data Science.
Other scholarship awards announced at the dinner included the CMDA Alumni Scholarship and CMDA Outstanding Senior Award, both supported by the CMDA Annual Fund.
Honorees for all three scholarship awards are selected based on their current academic success, as well as contributions to the university and the surrounding community. Recipients of the Hamlett Scholarship and CMDA Alumni Scholarship — which are both open to freshmen, sophomores, and juniors — come from a single pool of student applications.
Meanwhile, the Outstanding Senior Award — open to students graduating in Spring, Summer, or Fall 2025 — requires a separate application process which includes faculty support.
Hamlett Scholarships are funded in amounts between $2000 and $5000, while the CMDA Alumni Scholarship and Outstanding Senior Award are both worth $500.
In addition to the announcement of this year’s scholarship recipients, the dinner also featured a special guest speaker: Victor Mukora, a 2023 CMDA alumnus and former Outstanding Senior Award honoree. Mukora, who currently works as a developer at Deloitte, shared his thoughts on how the CMDA program has positively impacted his postgraduate career.
A full list of this year’s CMDA scholarship award winners follows:
HAMLETT SCHOLARSHIP
Zoe Baker
Jocelyn Bilton
Pooja Challa
Ethan Chang
Micah Craine
Sophia Gavasheli
Sam Green
Stanley Guo
Esteban Hernandez
Brandon Huang
Aarav Kenchiah
Sarah Bendetta John Kennedy
Rowan Martnishn
Nathaniel Mertz
Andy Nguyen
Bradley Roos
Levi Walker
Jeffrey Zhang
CMDA ALUMNI SCHOLARSHIP
Ryan Bentley
Newton Ma
Ruva Murali
Elisabeth Wasserman
CMDA OUTSTANDING SENIORS
Ashley Covitz
Sejal Gupta
Yihan Liu