Sleepy Hollow Student Receives Davidson Fellows Scholarship

SLEEPY HOLLOW, NY — An 18-year-old Sleepy Hollow student is one of 20 students across the country to be awarded a Davidson Institute Fellows scholarship.

The Davidson Fellows Scholarship Program recently announced its 2021 scholarship winners, one of whom is Owen Dugan, 18, of Sleepy Hollow.

He won a $10,000 scholarship for the development of new machine learning techniques.

"I am honored to be a Davidson Fellow, to have my work nationally recognized and to join the Davidson Fellows' community," Dugan said.

For his project, he developed several new techniques to improve and expand the scope of OccamNet, a new interpretable neural network architecture, with the goal of increasing the adoption of interpretable and reliable machine learning techniques.

Bob Davidson, founder of the Davidson Institute, said the scholarship recipients rose to the challenges of a global pandemic to complete significant projects within their fields of study.

"To be awarded this recognition, these students have shown immense skill and work ethic, and they should be commended as they continue their educational and research journeys while continuing to work to solve some of the world's most vexing problems," he said.

The 2021 Davidson Fellows were honored during a virtual ceremony in September.

The Davidson Fellows Scholarship program offers $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 college scholarships to students 18 or younger, who have completed significant projects that have the potential to benefit society in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, literature and music.

The scholarship has provided more than $8.6 million in funds to 386 students since its inception in 2001, and was named one of the most prestigious undergraduate scholarships by U.S. News & World Report. It is a program of the Davidson Institute, a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Reno, Nevada, that supports profoundly gifted youth.