O’Donnell Foundation Creates First-Year CSEM Fellowship Program

The O’Donnell Foundation has committed $920,000 over four years to the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at The University of Texas at Austin to support first-year CSEM graduate student fellowships.

ICES, an international leader in computer modeling and simulation development, enrolls an average of 75 students in its graduate program. The new funding will allow all first-year graduate students not otherwise receiving fellowship support, to receive “O’Donnell Fellowships” that cover tuition, fees, and living expenses during their first year of graduate study.

“We draw students from very diverse backgrounds, ranging from physics to mathematics to engineering, and we expect them to amass a graduate level proficiency in the very broad areas making up computational science--namely mathematics, computer science and the core areas of science and engineering in the first year,” said J. Tinsley Oden, ICES director and UT’s associate vice president for research. “So students must dedicate one full year of intense study to get to a common level of competency in these three areas. Only then are they prepared to participate in the institute’s research.”

After the first year, these students are prepared to assume research assistantships in faculty labs, where they earn stipends to cover tuition, fees, and living expenses.

“All of us at ICES are very grateful for this generous contribution,” said Professor Oden, “because it addresses the critical issue of how to provide resources for highly-qualified students to support their first year without burdening them with the responsibility of research or teaching.”

Recipients will be known as O’Donnell Fellows, to honor donors Peter and Edith O’Donnell.

The O’Donnell Foundation, started by Peter and Edith O’Donnell in 1957, primarily supports engineering, science and math education, arts programs and medical research.

ICES develops and teaches a relatively new discipline that combines mathematical modeling, applied mathematics, software engineering and computational visualization. The Institute is a unique organizational unit, dedicated to both research and graduate study in an interdisciplinary environment.

For the 75 students enrolled in the ICES graduate program annually, 42 professors currently serve as ICES core faculty members. The more than $90 million in research projects conducted by core faculty members, research staff, and students include:

• Energy research to develop computer software to design and discover materials for low-cost energy applications such as economical battery materials to capture solar energy and materials that convert water to hydrogen using sunlight;

• Cardiovascular disease-related research to develop computer simulations to improve surgical repair of the heart’s mitral valve, one of the aging heart’s key points of failure, and a second project to develop a computational growth and remodeling model of the enlargement of the heart’s right ventricle caused by high blood pressure;

• Medical equipment research to develop computational methods that will improve the design of MRI systems for high-resolution mapping of the human brain;

• Chemical engineering research to develop computational methods that predict the structure and properties of membranes used in water purification applications and fuel cells;

• Computer science research to create networks for connecting genes and diseases inspired by social networking methods.

Professor Oden is the founding director of ICES, and an author of over 600 scientific publications. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Among the numerous awards he has received for his work, Dr. Oden was honored with the A. C. Eringen Medal, the Worcester Reed Warner Medal, the Lohmann Medal, the Theodore von Karman Medal, the John von Neumann medal, the Newton/Gauss Congress Medal, and the Stephan P. Timoshenko Medal. He was also knighted as "Chevalier des Palmes Academiques" by the French government and he holds five honorary doctorates. Most recently, Dr. Oden was honored in Japan as the 2013 Laureate for The Honda Foundation Prize for his role in establishing the field of computational mechanics.