Naval Academy Midshipman 1st Class (senior) William Jarrett, 22, of Gales Ferry, Connecticut, and Midshipman 1st Class (senior) Chase Lee, 22, of Las Vegas, Nevada, were recently named Knight-Hennessy Scholars. The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program provides full funding for students to pursue a graduate degree at Stanford University.
Jarrett and Lee are two of 70 scholars selected to the program’s fifth cohort of students. More than 6,500 candidates competed for one of the 70 scholarships awarded.
Jarrett is an honors robotics and control engineering major and a Spanish minor. He is one of 13 Trident Scholars in the Class of 2022, conducting research in electro-optics and optical communication systems.
Jarrett intends to pursue a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Jarrett will serve as a submarine officer following his time as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. His long-term career goals include applying to the astronaut program after gaining operational experience aboard the Navy’s nuclear submarines.
Jarrett is a member of the Navy Men’s Lightweight Crew team outside the classroom, competing in and winning the lightweight straight four at the 2021 IRA National Championships. In 2021, Jarrett had the opportunity to live abroad in Costa Rica as a culmination of his Spanish studies.
Lee is a cyber operations major at the Naval Academy and completed the National Security Agency’s Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations program. He is a Harry S. Truman Scholar and a MIT Policy Hackathon 2021 Internet and Cybersecurity Challenge winner. His research interests include the gaps in knowledge pertaining to cybersecurity education and training in elementary schools and the Department of Defense, respectively. His capstone research focused on building a platform template for applying Ethereum blockchain technology and homomorphic encryption to electronic voting.
As a midshipman, Lee served as the Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference technology director, a Company Platoon Commander, the Midshipman Action Group’s chief of staff, and president of Naval Academy’s Chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He also interned with the Department of Defense and Innoplex, LLC.
Lee intends to pursue a master’s degree in international policy, specializing in cyber policy and security. Following his time as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, Lee will serve as a surface warfare officer with the option to later serve as an information professional.
For more information on the Knight-Hennessy Scholars, visit https://knight-hennessy.stanford.edu.
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