{"id":9909,"date":"2022-08-12T08:48:35","date_gmt":"2022-08-12T15:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about-hmc\/?p=9909"},"modified":"2023-01-11T15:40:16","modified_gmt":"2023-01-11T23:40:16","slug":"harvey-mudd-college-2022-astronaut-scholars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/2022\/08\/12\/harvey-mudd-college-2022-astronaut-scholars\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvey Mudd College 2022 Astronaut Scholars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Based upon exemplary academic performance, ingenuity and unique aptitude for research, Harvey Mudd College students Amani Maina-Kilaas \u201923 and Alec Vercruysse \u201923 have been selected by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation to join the elite group of Astronaut Scholars for the 2022\u20132023 academic year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Offered to students pursuing degrees in STEM, the 2022 ASF Astronaut Scholarship was awarded to 68 undergraduate junior- or senior-year students from 45 U.S. universities and colleges. Faculty members at ASF-partnering institutions nominated students for the scholarships (up to $15,000). Other benefits include networking and mentoring opportunities with astronauts, alumni and industry leaders; participation in the Michael Collins Family Professional Development Program; and a paid trip to attend ASF\u2019s Innovators Week, which provides an opportunity for the Astronaut Scholars to present their research at a technical conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amani Maina-Kilaas \u201923<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Maina-kilaas\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After his first year at HMC, Maina-Kilaas joined the AMISTAD Lab led by HMC computer science professor George Monta\u00f1ez. Lab members investigated how the ability to perceive intention can advantage virtual agents and demonstrated survival benefits in adversarial situations through statistical analysis of various simulations. The work with AMISTAD resulted in three publications\u2014two with Maina-Kilaas as lead author; one as co-lead author\u2014and led to him being nominated for the Goldwater Scholarship and being named one of four Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers by the Computing Research Association in early 2022. He has interned as a software engineer at Stripe and tutored peers in programming languages and introductory computer science. This summer, with University of Southern California computer science professor Muhao Chen, he researched natural language understanding (specifically, machine common sense) in the Language Understanding and Knowledge Acquisition Lab at the Information Sciences Institute. The work of a researcher appeals to him, so Maina-Kilaas will pursue a PhD in computer science. \u201cI would rather spend my career generating new knowledge and advancing the field as a university professor or as an industry researcher,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alec Vercruysse \u201923<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Alec<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A scholar-athlete, Vercruysse is passionate about electrical and computer engineering. His interest stems from \u201cawe at the power and potential of modern electronics and a desire to harness this power to improve our world,\u201d he says. He has done research with HMC engineering professor Matthew Spencer on phased array technology, which enables advanced transceivers to computationally control the direction of sensitivity of the antennas to improve their gain in relevant directions. \u201cThe field of communications and radio-frequency is still in rapid development,\u201d says Vercruysse. \u201cWhile over half the world is now somehow connected to the internet, reliable access is still a luxury for the lucky half of the world that is connected. Furthermore, as more devices become wireless and wirelessly connected to home and organizational networks, more advanced schemes are required to support this massive increase in devices. Advanced antenna technologies and modulation techniques are in development that can allow wireless communication between an ever-increasing set of nodes without interference or other degradation of quality.\u201d As a member of the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men\u2019s swimming and diving team that earned the 2020 SCIAC title, he reached the finals in multiple events to help give CMS its victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ASF is a nonprofit organization established in 1984 by the six surviving members of America\u2019s original Mercury astronauts. The Astronaut Scholarship is the nation\u2019s largest, merit-based monetary award given to science and engineering undergraduate students. Harvey Mudd College is one of 41 institutions\u2014and the only non-doctorate granting school\u2014selected by the foundation to participate in the program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Based upon exemplary academic performance, ingenuity and unique aptitude for research, Harvey Mudd College students Amani Maina-Kilaas \u201923 and Alec […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":9915,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,12],"class_list":["post-9909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-award","category-computer-science","category-engineering"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}