Teenage doctoral scholar top achiever
university-of-canterbury
Tue Mar 27 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Teenage doctoral scholar top achiever
Tuesday, 27 March 2007, 2:32 pm
Press Release: University of Canterbury
Teenage doctoral scholar recognised as one of the country’s top achievers
A 19-year-old University of Canterbury PhD student has been recognised by the Government as one of the country’s top achievers.
Ray Hidayat has been awarded one of 50 Top Achiever Scholarships and will receive $71,790 over the next three years to help towards his PhD in computer science.
Ray began his doctoral studies a year ago at an age when most are just beginning undergraduate studies.
“I’m just a regular 19-year-old it’s just I’m doing a different degree than others my age,” he said.
Ray is one of eight University of Canterbury PhD students to receive the prestigious scholarship in the latest round announced on Tuesday by Tertiary Education Minister Dr Michael Cullen. Together the Canterbury students will receive more than $700,000 out of a total pool of $4.7million.
The other successful Canterbury students are Bing Wu, Brendon Bradley, David Garrett, James Bull, Kathie Overeem, Moffat Mathews and Rose Turnbull.
Ray began studying at Canterbury in 2006 having earlier completed a Bachelor of Commerce and Management at Lincoln University. He is researching three-dimensional object scanning and recognition for augmented reality.
Ray said he was first introduced to computers at kindergarten and had been fascinated with them ever since. He started studying university papers part time at the age of 11 and started full-time at the age of 15.
“Computer science is all about dealing with challenging problems. It is great to see what you can achieve with a computer and what you can create out of nothing but an idea.”
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He said news of the scholarship win was still sinking in and he had not had time to think about what the money would mean.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Roy Sharp said it was exciting to see UC’s researchers being recognised.
“As a strong research-led university, Canterbury is very interested in the development of talented people. I am delighted for these researchers and look forward to seeing the fruits of their work.”
ENDS
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