9/23/2020 Miranda Holloway
Six graduate students from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering are part of the 2021 class of Siebel Scholars.
Written by Miranda Holloway
Six graduate students from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering are part of the 2021 class of Siebel Scholars.
The Siebel Scholars program recognizes the most talented graduate students at top universities in the fields of business, computer science, bioengineering, and energy science. Each year, around 90 students receive $35,000 in support toward their final year of graduate study.
Siebel Scholars are examining some of today’s most pressing problems, advancing on solutions, and forming a lifelong community.
Five of the six Grainger Engineering awardees represent the Department of Computer Science. They include: Suneer Angra, Beleicia Bullock, Bhavana Jain, Haoyang Wen, and Andrew Yoo. Their research interests span from CS ethics to machine learning to natural language processing.
"I want to leverage the scholarship to drive my project that I have been working on for more than a year," Yoo said. "I am excited about advancing the research landscape in computer science, and the scholarship enables me to work even harder."
The sixth winner is Phuc Huynh, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Huynh is a part of the Energy Science segment of the Siebel Scholar program. His research interests surround creating a sustainable and energy secure future.
The program focuses on excellence in both research and leadership, and Siebel Scholars form a lasting community and network with their peers. The funding allows recipients to further their research, attend conferences, network, and more.
“Personally, being named a 2021 Siebel Scholar is both exciting and encouraging! Despite my love for exploring how technology impacts society and communities of color, I sometimes worry that my work does not belong within the field of computer science,” Bullock said. “It’s easy to give in to anxiety that my research isn’t ‘technical’ or ‘flashy’ enough. However, this award provided me with more than just a financial benefit but provided encouragement as I continue to research how we can create technology that empowers communities instead of harming them. I am excited to meet and grow with the other scholars, as well as utilize my award for further research, conferences, and learning experiences!”
The Siebel Scholars program is funded and run by the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation. Thomas Siebel is an Illinois alumnus (BA History ’75, MBA ’83, MS CS ’85).
Siebel is the chairman and CEO of C3 IoT, an enterprise PaaS and SaaS software company that enables companies to design, develop, deploy, provision, and operate large-scale IoT applications. C3 IoT applies the power of big data, advanced analytics, social networking, machine learning, and cloud computing to enable the rapid development of IoT SaaS systems.
Siebel was the founder, chairman, and CEO of Siebel Systems, one of the world’s leading software companies, that merged with Oracle Corporation in January 2006. Founded in 1993, Siebel Systems rapidly became a leader in application software with more than 8,000 employees in 32 countries, over 4,500 corporate customers, and annual revenue in excess of $2 billion.
Siebel serves on College of Engineering boards at the University of Illinois and UC Berkeley. He is a director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.