Stellakis Named a 2005 Goldwater Recipient    

Junior Leonidas J. Stellakis from South Plainfield, N.J., has been named a Goldwater Scholar for the 2005-06 academic year by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. He is the first civil engineering student at Notre Dame to receive this honor.

Stellakis spent summer 2004 working with George Scherer, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University, on a project concerning transport issues in cementitious materials. Stellakis measured the permeability of samples and evaluated the pore structure of the samples using nuclear-magnetic resonance. This summer, he will interm for Leslie E. Robertson Associates in New York City, a consulting engineering firm that has provided structural engineering services for the Shanghai World Financial Center, World Trade Center, and PPG Industries Corporate Headquarters.

He is involved in several on-campus organizations and will serve as vice president for the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineering for the 2005-06 academic year. His goal is to obtain a doctorate in civil engineering and become an accomplished scholar in a field that bridges civil engineering and materials science.

The Goldwater Scholarship is considered to be the premier undergraduate award of its kind in the fields of engineering, mathematics, and the natural sciences. In its 17-year history, the foundation has awarded 4,562 scholarships worth approximately $45 million. This year the trustees of the Goldwater Foundation awarded 320 scholarships to undergraduates across the United States. Each Goldwater Scholar is selected on the basis of academic merit. Of the 1,091 applicants for the 2005-06 awards, 45 were engineering students.

To become a Goldwater scholar, one must have impressive academic qualifications. Many Goldwater scholars also garner prestigious postgraduate fellowships. For example, recent scholars have been awarded 58 Rhodes Scholarships, 72 Marshall Awards, and numerous other distinguished fellowships.

Copyright 2005. University of Notre Dame.