PASADENA—The California Institute of Technology is pleased to announce that Kerwyn "Casey" Huang '98 has been selected as one of 10 Churchill Scholars.
Huang is currently majoring in physics and math at Caltech, and will graduate in June. He will spend the 1998/99 academic year at Cambridge University, where he will earn an MPhil in physics, focusing on condensed-matter physics, specifically Monte Carlo calculations. As a member of the 36th annual class of Churchill Scholars, Huang will live in Churchill College, Cambridge University's prestigious science and engineering college.
In 1997 Huang received a Caltech Merit Scholarship, H. J. Ryser Award, and Barry Goldwater Scholarship. He is a member of the varsity basketball and swim teams and has been a member of the varsity water polo team. He has served on the Student Core Curriculum Committee and Academic Research Committee. He has also served as Page House librarian. His personal interests include travel and playing the piano, and he is a great fan of the Marx Brothers.
The most remarkable thing about Huang is that he is only 19 years old. He enrolled at Caltech as a freshman at the age of 15 and has been an academic superstar since day one. His GPA has been consistently above 4.0.
Huang's parents, Dr. K. C. Huang and Dr. Pippa Simpson, reside in Little Rock, Arkansas. His father is a medical doctor specializing in anesthesiology, and his mother has a PhD and is a practicing biostatistician. Huang grew up in Grosse Point, Michigan, and attended Grosse Point South High School.
The Churchill is a major national fellowship with only 10 winners selected from a highly competitive national pool nominated by a select group of 57 universities with outstanding undergraduate science/engineering/math programs. Funded by the Winston Churchill Foundation, the program provides 10 awards to outstanding U.S. citizens for one year of graduate study in engineering, mathematics, or science leading to a graduate degree from Cambridge University.
Founded in 1891, Caltech is located on a 124-acre campus in Pasadena. The Institute also manages the nearby Jet Propulsion Laboratory and operates eight other off-campus astronomical, seismological, and marine biology facilities. Caltech has an enrollment of some 2,000 students, more than half of whom are in graduate studies, and a faculty of about 280 professorial members and 284 research members. Caltech employs a staff of more than 1,700 on campus and 5,300 at JPL.
In 1997, U.S. News & World Report ranked Caltech as one of the top 10 universities in the country. The magazine in 1993 also ranked Caltech's graduate programs in geology and physics as first in the United States. The average SAT score of members of recent incoming freshman classes has consistently been over 1,400, the highest in the nation.
Over the years, 26 Nobel Prizes and four Crafoord Prizes have been awarded to faculty members and alumni. Forty-three Caltech faculty members and alumni have received the National Medal of Science; and eight alumni (two of whom are also trustees), two additional trustees, and one faculty member have won the National Medal of Technology. Since 1958, 13 faculty members have received the annual California Scientist of the Year award. On the Caltech faculty there are 75 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and on the faculty and Board of Trustees, 68 members of the National Academy of Sciences and 43 members of the National Academy of Engineering.
Written by Sue McHugh