Levin and 13 other Americans (eight other men and five women)- all academic, professional or civic leaders- were culled from among 880 applicants for the prestigious fellowship, which was established 30 years ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson. White House Fellows meet regularly with senior government officials, top business executives, journalists and other leaders. HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, CNN President Tom Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin L. Powell are among the program's illustrious alumni.
During the 1994-95 academic year, Levin was a Humboldt Fellow and visiting professor of mathematics at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. In July, just one week after he completed his German sojourn, he packed up and headed for the capital to discuss his assignment as a White House Fellow. From mid-July to mid-August Levin was a guest of computer science Prof. Gene Golub at Stanford University, working on matrix computations.
Levin and the other White House Fellows survived a rigorous screening process that included an application so lengthy and detailed it took him four weeks to complete, and interviews by a panel of 30 celebrities including Sally Ride, the first woman in space, and Edwin Moses, who earned a gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1976 and 1984 Summer Olympics. In addition to extraordinary professional achievements, White House Fellows must have a record of community service. Levin, for example, initiated WPI's recycling program under the auspices of an Interactive Qualifying Project in which members of the team established and monitored recycling containers for paper in Atwater Kent. The program, now supervised by Plant Services, was ultimately extended to the entire campus. Levin has also served as legal guardian of a teen-age boy for the purpose of monitoring his progress and behavior in school, and has provided hospice service to a terminally ill cancer patient.
Levin earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was awarded an American Electronics Association Fellowship. Upon graduation he was named a DADD Visiting Scientist at the Technical University of Munich. He joined the WPI faculty in 1988 and established the Computational Fields Laboratory in 1989. In 1991, he and Tahar El-Korchi, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, were named Presidential Young Investigators (See Summer 1991 WPI Wire). This highly competitive award, which supports recipients' research, encourages the development of future academic leaders in teaching and scholarship.
Levin's research and teaching interests currently involve the computation of electromagnetic fields, most recently the fields that come from the heart. During his year in Darmstadt, he worked with Dr. Erhard Meister, director of the Institute of Mathematical Physics, and with a postdoctoral student on the development of special algorithms to analyze first and second kind Fredholm integral equations using the wavelet basis. "This research has applications to all kinds of fields," says Levin, "particularly high-voltage engineering and other low-frequency electromagnetic fields."
The Washington, D.C. appointment is a return of sorts to Levin, who grew up in Silver Spring, Md., where he graduated from Montgomery Blair High School. "I was a congressional intern in high school and I've been involved in the political process at the federal level," he says. "I'm very interested in learning about Federal policy making with regard to the environment, technology and education.
"My appointment as a White House Fellow is a tremendous opportunity," Levin says. "The year in Washington is absolutely consistent with WPI's unique and special mission: to be a leader among technological, research and educational institutions and to equip our students with the special skills that are necessary to consider the practical, political and societal implications of their work. There is no better training that I as a teacher can receive in this regard. I will later be able to report with authority and credibility how the massive wheels of policy turn, and what makes them move."
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