Woodward wins Chateaubriand Fellowship to study in France

            Robert J. Woodward, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a graduate research fellow of the National Science Foundation, was selected to receive the Chateaubriand Fellowship of the Office of Science and Technology of the Embassy of France in Washington, D.C.

            This STEM fellowship will allow him to conduct research for one year at the University of Montpellier in France in collaboration with Christian Bessiere, a research director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. In addition to being selected as a Chateaubriand Fellow, Woodward also received an award from NSF's Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide program to support his travel to France.

            Woodward's application to the Chateaubriand Fellowship was ranked in the top 10 of the 80 applications received, only 19 of which were granted for long stays (nine months). By virtue of his fellowship, Woodward will have the opportunity to obtain a dual doctoral degree from UNL and the University of Montpellier.

            A native of Rochester, Minn., Woodward graduated with high distinction from UNL in May 2010 with a bachelor of science degree in computer science and mathematics. He was admitted to the UNL Ph.D. program in computer science in the same month and received his master of science degree in computer science in December 2011.

            Chateaubriand Fellows are selected based on the merits of the applicants and their host in France. As emphasized by Annick Suzor-Weiner, counselor for science and technology at the Embassy of France in Washington, one of the goals of the fellowship is to encourage the two teams, the Constraint Systems Laboratory at UNL and Bessier's group, and the two universities, UNL and Montpellier, to start a sustainable scientific collaboration. Woodward and Bessiere have been collaborating for more than three years, and Bessiere was a voting member on Woodward's master's thesis. The two teams have already published a number of papers together in top academic conferences.

            This international experience is not the first one for Woodward. He was a research intern during summer 2010 and 2012 at the University College Cork in Ireland. In addition, Woodward was a Goldwater Fellow (2008-10) and the recipient of numerous departmental awards at UNL.