Student Achievements

GVSU Alumni Awarded NDSEG Fellowship

August 25, 2020

GVSU Alumni Awarded NDSEG Fellowship

Kate Skocelas, '19, is an alumna of Grand Valley’s Applied Computer Science graduate program (formerly known as Computer Information Systems). She was awarded the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship from the Department of Defense. Kate received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Grand Valley and is currently a PhD student at MSU.

Kate had never considered working for a doctoral degree, but her experience at GVSU, most notably her professors, encouraged her to continue her education and pursue a career in academia. She worked closely with Dr. Robert Adams and Dr. Byron DeVries to prepare her application for Ph.D. programs and lab interviews. She also got assistance from GVSU’s Career Center with preparing for interviews and finalizing her applications.   

During her time at Grand Valley, Kate received the NASA Michigan Space Grant Consortium Graduate Fellowship in the summer of 2019. She worked with Dr. Byron DeVries to study improved robotic software in unexpected environmental scenarios using AI. “This provided me with experience presenting at conferences and writing a scientific paper for publication,” Kate says about the research. The paper, “Test Data Generation for Recurrent Neural Network Implementations” was published this year during the 20th Annual IEEE International Conference on Elector Information Technology.

The Fellowship was awarded for her work in her Doctorate program at MSU, where she works in the Digital Evolution Lab to study biologically-inspired artificial immune system algorithms. “My goal is to advance the understanding of evolution as applied to coordinated networks… paving the way for a new generation of robust and effective distributed algorithms. I hope to gain new insights into host-parasite coevolution and the ways in which immune systems can evolve.”

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Page last modified August 25, 2020