CSE Undergraduates Jialiu Lin and Kevin Keliang Zhao Got Full Scholarships to World's Top Universities

Jialiu Lin and Kevin Zhao, from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of HKUST, got scholarships to Carnegie Mellon University and University of California, San Diego in the United States respectively.

(From left to right) Jialiu Lin; Professor Lionel M. Ni, Jialiu's adviser and Head of Department

Jialiu Lin received full scholarship from Carnegie Mellon University for her PhD study. The scholarship covers the tuition fees and a stipend for each month during her 6-year study. She started to apply for PhD programs in October last year and have got offers from 3 universities early this year. She finally decided to go to Carnegie Mellon University. Graduate programs in Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University ranked No. 1 in US News in 2006.

Jialiu is currently a final year student in Computer Engineering (CPEG). She came to HKUST for undergraduate study in 2004 after her high school study in Zhejiang, PRC. Her Final Year Thesis was on ID assignment issue in Wireless Sensor Network while networking being her research interest in general. During her 3-year studies, she was pleased with the opportunities she had been given to work on various research projects. "The university life in HKUST has exceeded my expectation." She said.

Kevin Zhao

While we are congratulating Jialiu for her achievements, we are most delighted to learn that Kevin Keliang Zhao, a final year student majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics, has also been admitted to a PhD Program at a world-class university with full scholarship.

In February this year, an offer from the University of California, San Diego was given to Kevin for his admission to the PhD Program as well as the full scholarship coverage.

Kevin is a mainland student from Xiamen who joined HKUST in 2004. In the past few years, he has received awards in various competitions such as ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, ACM HK Chapter Local Contest and HKUST Programming Contest. During his undergraduate studies in computer science, he has done a research project on Anonymity in Location Based Services as a Student Researcher with the supervision of Professor Dimitris Papadias.

Kevin's dream is to become a world-class researcher in the coming ten years. We are happy to see him taking his first steps towards his goal.

Being the Head of Computer Science and Engineering Department and the adviser of Jialiu and Kevin, Professor Lionel M. Ni is very proud of their achievements. He believes the PhD programs at the world-class universities will definitely enable them to explore their potentials and interests further in the computer science field. He would also like to wish them all the best in their future endeavor.