CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Five students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign received the 2003 Siebel Scholars award for their outstanding work in the computer science graduate program.
Sindhura Bandhakavi, Srikanth Kandula, Vivek Sadanand, Joel Stanley and Jed Taylor were honored based on academic merit and leadership excellence. Each received a $25,000 cash award to defray tuition costs and expenses for their second year of graduate study.
Bandhakavi earned a bachelor of engineering degree at Osmania University, India, and is a research assistant in the Parallel Programming Laboratory at Illinois.
Kandula earned a bachelor of technology degree in computer science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India. Kandula is a research assistant in the department of computer science at Illinois.
Sadanand earned a bachelor of science degree in computer science at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science in Pilani, India, and has worked on a variety of research projects, including the development of a secure routing protocol for wireless networks.
Stanley earned his bachelor of science degree in computer science at the University of Portland in Oregon and has worked on many research projects, including those involving artificial intelligence.
Taylor earned a bachelor of science in computer science at Utah State University, has worked on numerous research projects and is a teaching assistant in Computer Science 105.
The award stems from the Siebel Scholars Program established at graduate schools of business or computer science at Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern, Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania and Illinois.
Siebel Systems Inc., an eBusiness application software provider, donated $2.6 million to each institution for the Siebel Scholars program. The investment proceeds of the endowment were designed to support the program indefinitely. Siebel Systems employees, including chairman Thomas M. Siebel, have assisted Siebel Scholars through providing mentoring services, job search assistance, and helping with business and public service initiatives.
