HOLLYWOOD, Md., June 17, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- St. Mary's Ryken graduate Ryan Fleming is one of five East Coast students to win a 2009 Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) Battle Management and Engagement Systems Division engineering scholarship. Fleming, along with his mother, was honored at a reception at the Northrop Grumman facility in Hollywood last night.
Photos accompanying this release are available at: http://media.globenewswire.com/noc/
This is the fourth year for the competition. For the first time, the competition was expanded beyond the division headquarters in Bethpage, N.Y., to applicants from Brevard County, Fla., and Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's counties in Md. - areas in which the Battle Management and Engagement Systems Division of the company's Aerospace Systems sector has major facilities.
The other 2009 scholars are:
* Elizabeth D'Arienzo - East Meadow H.S., East Meadow, N.Y. * Michael P. Lee - Eau Gallie H.S., Melbourne, Fla. * James Troise - Half Hollows Hills H.S. East., Dix Hills, N.Y. * Charles Vasko - Huntingtown H.S., Huntingtown, Md.
"Our hope with this scholarship program has always been to help stimulate interest in the sciences and technology in general, and in the aerospace technologies in particular," said Tom Vice, sector vice president of Battle Management and Engagement Systems division for Northrop Grumman. "It made sense for us to expand the competition to students who lived in the East Coast states our division calls home."
"That only made our evaluation team's annual challenge -- choosing the best of the best applicants -- that much harder," said Vice. "Every entrant presented great grades and an impressive list of school and community activities."
Fleming will receive $10,000 towards his four-year college education -- $2,500 per year over four years. He is attending Brown University in the fall.
In addition, he will get a paid summer internship at Northrop Grumman's Hollywood facility for the three summers of his four-years of undergraduate studies. Including salaries, this scholarship could be worth as much as $30,000.
Beyond the salaries, of greater value to Fleming may be that he will have the chance to work on real-world aerospace- and defense-related projects as a member of Northrop Grumman engineering teams. On the job, he will be mentored by accomplished senior engineers and while bringing his own, fresh approaches to research, development and production programs.
Past winners have made significant contributions to ongoing company projects. One intern-scholar, for example, helped develop a way to use 3-D graphics processing units to perform high-level, complex computations. As part of an engineering team, she enabled a radical reduction in the time it takes to complete such computations. The work has been published and presented at technical symposia.
A sixteen-member employee evaluation team reviewed all applications. Applicants were evaluated on their scholastic records, community service, letters of recommendation and their interest in the engineering profession. The committee eventually selected 10 finalists. Division executives interviewed the finalists and selected the winners.
"I seem to say this every year: Each year's class of winners makes a great impression on us," said Vice. "They learn from us and they contribute to us and our customers. I'm looking forward to welcoming our fourth group of scholars to Northrop Grumman."
Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.
