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Local angles: Durham, Henderson

Bennett Rogers of Durham wins Churchill Scholarship

CHAPEL HILL -- Bennett Rogers, 22, of Durham, a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has won one of 11 Churchill Scholarships awarded for 2003 among 61 candidates nationwide.

The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States presents the awards annually for a year of graduate study at England’s University of Cambridge. The scholarships, valued at about $27,000 each, reward outstanding academic and extracurricular accomplishments. Recipients are American undergraduates planning to pursue graduate studies in science, mathematics and engineering.

Rogers graduated with highest honors in December, earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science. At Cambridge, he will work toward a master’s degree, researching computer speech and language processing. Eventually he will pursue a doctorate in computer science, focusing on artificial intelligence and evolutionary computation, and seek to become a professor at a major research university.

Since 1993, nine UNC students have won the Churchill. The last one was Julius Lucks in 2001.

Rogers credited his parents, Tommie and Ann Rogers of Durham and Henderson, with having indulged his intellectual curiosity when he was younger. "They bought the chemistry kits and the mail-order science experiments, the Capsela robot assembly sets and the Radio Shack motorboat and radio kits," he wrote in his scholarship application. "When my dad wasn’t building and flying radio-controlled airplanes (and later, full size experimental aircraft) with my brother and me, he was helping me build and launch model rockets."

After graduating from Jordan High School in Durham in 1998, Rogers won National Merit and Robert C. Byrd scholarships and entered UNC as an honors student.

Physics professor Dr. Thomas Clegg invited Rogers to work with him on developing a new ion source system for Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratories. Rogers, a computer science major, presented his findings at a regional meeting of the American Physical Society in the fall of his sophomore year.

"Bennett surely ranks among the very best students to whom I have taught physics in my 35-year career at UNC-Chapel Hill," wrote Clegg in recommending Rogers for the Churchill.

Clegg also made an impression on his star pupil. "Realizing that Dr. Clegg spent his time in this way, researching topics that he chose and solving problems that interested him, I decided that I had found the career that best suited me," Rogers said.

Rogers earned a 3.98 grade-point average at Carolina, with a perfect 4.0 in his major. He was inducted into the Golden Key Honor Society and Phi Beta Kappa.

But science isn’t his only love. Rogers has played trombone for 11 years and has performed with UNC’s wind ensemble, orchestra, chamber groups and jazz band. In summer 2000, he played with the UNC Jazz Band at festivals in France, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

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Photo url: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/students/rogers_bennett.jpg

Contacts: Rogers is in Prague through April 7 but will check email periodically at bnut@email.unc.edu; after April 7 he may be reached at 919-960-8122.
Dr. Robert Greenberg, 843-7764 or 962-7550, Greenberg@unc.edu
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu