Student Achievements
GVSU Alumni Awarded NDSEG Fellowship
August 25, 2020
Kate Skocelas, '19, is an alumna of Grand Valley’s Applied Computer
Science graduate program (formerly known as Computer Information
Systems). She was awarded the National Defense Science and Engineering
Graduate Fellowship from the Department of Defense. Kate received her
Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Grand Valley and is currently a
PhD student at MSU.
Kate had never considered working for a doctoral degree, but her
experience at GVSU, most notably her professors, encouraged her to
continue her education and pursue a career in academia. She worked
closely with Dr. Robert Adams and Dr. Byron DeVries to prepare her
application for Ph.D. programs and lab interviews. She also got
assistance from GVSU’s Career Center with preparing for interviews and
finalizing her applications.
During her time at Grand Valley, Kate received the NASA Michigan
Space Grant Consortium Graduate Fellowship in the summer of 2019. She
worked with Dr. Byron DeVries to study improved robotic software in
unexpected environmental scenarios using AI. “This provided me with
experience presenting at conferences and writing a scientific paper
for publication,” Kate says about the research. The paper, “Test Data
Generation for Recurrent Neural Network Implementations” was published
this year during the 20th Annual IEEE International
Conference on Elector Information Technology.
The Fellowship was awarded for her work in her Doctorate program
at MSU, where she works in the Digital Evolution Lab to study
biologically-inspired artificial immune system algorithms. “My goal is
to advance the understanding of evolution as applied to coordinated
networks… paving the way for a new generation of robust and effective
distributed algorithms. I hope to gain new insights into host-parasite
coevolution and the ways in which immune systems can evolve.”