News Release

Jacobs School Graduate Students Receive Inaugural Woolley Fellowships

Jacobs School graduate students Maria De Gador Canton and Alejandro Hevia were awarded inaugural R.B. Woolley Graduate Fellowships in Engineering. The $5,000 fellowships are given to those who have demonstrated exceptional leadership at the School.

Canton has conducted stellar research in biofluidmechanics, received the 2002 “Best Teaching Assistant Award” in Mechanical Engineering, and gave birth to two children — all while maintaining a 3.9 GPA. “Her research on the etiology of intracranial aneurisms is a very innovative and challenging problem. She has presented her work at four different symposia where she has received very enthusiastic review from leaders in the field of biofluidmechanics,” said Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department Chair, Juan Lasheras. Canton 's work was honored yet again when she won the Best Poster Award at the Jacobs School 's 2001 Annual Research Review.

According to Canton (right): “It has been a great honor to receive this fellowship from the Jacobs School of Engineering. For me it represents a wonderful recognition of my work at UCSD, inside and outside the lab. It will allow me to focus on my research during next year, without having to worry about funding issues. It is a pleasure to be one of the first recipients of this fellowship and I hope this great initiative will continue encouraging graduate students to use their leadership skills in their everyday life.”

Hevia, a Ph.D. computer science student has received top marks in each of his graduate courses, published three papers on cryptography and presented at three international conferences, and was instrumental in implementing a unique and much needed departmental teacher assistant training program in his role as master TA. “Alejandro, in particular, has been asked to speak multiple times to other master/senior TAs on campus to help them in training their own TAs, and to possibly setup similar types of training programs. Alejandro's passion for doing a great job as master TA, to identify and meet real needs in the department, and to go beyond anything that has been done before was a key factor in the significant success of this venture,” explained Computer Science and Engineering Professor Dean Tullsen.

Upon discovering that he had been named a 2003 recipient of the Woolley Fellowship, Hevia (left) said: “The news about the fellowship came to me as a complete surprise. I can honestly say that when Dean Tullsen and I started thinking about improving the Teaching Assistant training program for our department, we just thought of it as something that needed to be done. It took a substantial amount of effort, certainly more than what Dean or I were required to do, and sometimes, I found myself doubting whether the effort would ever be appreciated. So, receiving the Woolley Fellowship represents not only an incredible honor, but also the wonderful feeling that every effort to improve our School — no matter how tiny — will be seen and appreciated by the community. And that feeling is priceless. Therefore, I would like to express my sincere thanks to every one that made this recognition possible, especially Dean Tullsen, Daniele Micciancio, Julie Conner, Ramamohan Paturi, and everyone at the School of Engineering .”