Two UGA students named 2002 Gates Cambridge Scholars
WRITERS: Allyson Mann, (706) 583-0914, tiny@uga.edu; Kim Cretors, (706) 542-6927, kcretors@uga.edu
CONTACT: Jere Morehead, (706) 542-6908, morehead@uga.edu
Feb 15, 2002, 16:14

ATHENS, Ga. — For the second year in a row, University of Georgia students have been awarded Gates Cambridge Scholarships. The scholarship program, funded by a $210 million endowment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is in its second year.

The 2002 scholars from UGA are William Hollingsworth, a Ph.D. student working in computer science, and Yi Lee, a senior in the UGA Honors Program. Hollingsworth is the son of John and Elsie Hollingsworth of Athens; Lee is the son of Yoke Lan Kan of Conyers.

The merit-based scholarships — patterned after the University of Oxford’s Rhodes Scholarships — cover one to three years of study at the University of Cambridge in England. The Gates Cambridge Scholarships are open to students from any country except Britain.

“This is tremendous news for the University of Georgia and just one more indication of the continued upward trend in quality across the board here,” said UGA President Michael F. Adams. “For UGA to have three Gates Cambridge Scholars in the first two classes may surprise some, but not those of us who know the credentials of our students and the extraordinary work of our faculty. Recognition such as this flows from doing things well.”

The inaugural class of Gates Cambridge Scholars included Semil Choski, also a student in UGA’s Honors Program. Additionally, this year’s list of recipients includes Bonnie Ling, a former UGA honors student who is now a graduate student at Tufts University. In total, UGA has had four students or former students named Gates Cambridge Scholars in the first two years of the program’s existence, three of them Honors Program students.

Hollingsworth’s research at UGA focuses on computer speech synthesis. He hopes to develop software that will read entire books out loud to people who are visually impaired. Speech synthesizers currently available are not intended for long documents because the quality of the speech and intonation makes them difficult to listen to for long periods of time.

“I think that’s well within reach, and the only question is ‘how well’ it will work, not ‘whether’ it will work,” said Michael Covington, associate director of UGA’s Artificial Intelligence Center and Hollingsworth’s Ph.D. advisor. “After completing his B.A. and M.A. at UGA, I think it’s fair to say that Bill is well prepared for Cambridge University.”

Hollingsworth’s scholarship is for one year starting in the fall of 2002. He plans to study linguistics with an emphasis on acoustic phonetics and speech synthesis.

“I am extremely honored to be offered the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and I am very grateful to everyone who has helped or encouraged me along the way,” said Hollingsworth.

Lee, who was born in Jahore, Malaysia, is working toward two Bachelor of Arts degrees: one in journalism under the direction of Nathaniel Kohn in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the other in East Asian studies with the guidance of UGA Associate Dean Clifton Pannell of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

“Yi Lee’s selection as a Gates Cambridge Scholar brings great recognition to both the Honors Program and the University of Georgia. He is a wonderful undergraduate scholar, and we knew he would be a strong contender for this prestigious award,” said Jere Morehead, associate provost and director of the Honors Program. “We are not surprised that he made such a favorable impression on the Gates selection committee,” Morehead said.

Lee’s honors thesis (in East Asian studies) concerns the evolution of Taiwanese politics during the years after the end of martial law in the Republic of China. It is tentatively titled “In the Shadow of Tiananmen: Taiwanese Politics, 1988–2001.” He has co-authored a paper with Kohn entitled “Musickonciet,” which explores pop music, inter-textuality and post-modern scholarship. The paper has been presented at three conferences and is being prepared for publication.

“I want to thank my mother and my teachers for their dedication, generosity and graciousness,” said Lee. “I am the person I am today because of their many efforts, and I hope that I can continue to reflect well on them far into the future. If the Gates scholarship is a sign of great things to come, then I wish I can also share my future successes with the people that have so profoundly shaped my thought and character — my mother, my teachers and my friends.”

Lee hopes to earn a Ph.D. in Chinese history while at Cambridge. His dissertation will deal with former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and the political institutional history of the Chinese Communist Party under Deng’s reign.

##


NOTE TO EDITOR: Phone numbers for William Hollingsworth and Yi Lee are available upon request. Digital images of the award recipients are available at www.photo.alumni.uga.edu.