{"id":3249,"date":"2025-12-16T10:09:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T15:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/?p=3249"},"modified":"2025-12-16T15:43:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T20:43:40","slug":"peter-zhao-scholarship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/2025\/12\/16\/peter-zhao-scholarship\/","title":{"rendered":"Announcing Peter Zhao as the Recipient of the Paul Cormier Red Hat Open Source Scholarship"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are delighted to announce that Peter Zhao (ENG\u201926) has been selected as this year\u2019s Paul Cormier Red Hat Open Source Scholar. Peter is a Computer Engineering major with a concentration in Machine Learning with a minor in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University\u2019s College of Engineering. This prestigious scholarship, established by Red Hat in honor of Paul Cormier, the former chairman of Red Hat Research, is awarded annually to a rising senior who embodies the collaborative, community-driven values and passion for open-source technology that Paul championed throughout his decades-long career at Red Hat. Peter\u2019s achievements across research, industry, and academia reflect a student deeply committed to the mission and values of open-source technology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter\u2019s path to open-source began in the classroom, through BU\u2019s Introduction to Operating Systems course taught by Orran Krieger, a College of Engineering professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of Red Hat Research. The course challenged him to think in new ways about computer systems. It led him to engage further with the subject matter through office hours, which introduced him to Red Hat Distinguished Engineer Larry Woodman, whose career path to open-source inspired his own journey. \u201cHearing how he transitioned from aerospace engineering to working with open-source technology showed me the kind of impact you can have in this field,\u201d Peter reflects.<\/span><\/p>\n

From there, Peter\u2019s immersion in open-source accelerated rapidly. Through a summer internship at Red Hat, he experienced firsthand the uniquely open, collaborative culture that defines Red Hat engineering. In team meetings, interns and senior engineers alike were invited to share ideas, reflecting one of the core values of open-source technology. \u201cEveryone had an equal voice. They didn\u2019t just ask about my experience; they asked what I cared about, what I wanted to work on.\u201d Red Hat helped tailor his internship to his interests in cloud computing, OpenShift, and AI workflows, providing him with the opportunity to contribute to projects that enable others to deploy AI applications at scale.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond industry experience, Peter also pursued research opportunities, joining Professor Ayse Coskun\u2019s <\/span>Performance & Energy-Aware Computing Lab (PEACLab)<\/span><\/a> in April 2024, through <\/span>BU\u2019s Distinguished Summer Research Fellowship (DSRF)<\/span><\/a>. Through this opportunity, he created systems for analyzing distributed tracing data and assessing complex distributed applications for cloud environments. His commitment to research excellence led him to work with his mentor to write a grant proposal for the prestigious Google Academic Research Award, securing an unrestricted gift for the project as well as outside collaboration and mentorship from Google engineers. He also earned the opportunity to share his work through a workshop,<\/span> \u201cBuilding easily deployable RAG applications with Llama Stack\u201d<\/span><\/a> at DevCONF, an annual open-source community conference sponsored by Red Hat, for developers and contributors to present and share their work in the open-source space, which he describes as one of his most meaningful milestones.<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter\u2019s openness to new challenges is matched by his enthusiasm for helping others explore open source as a teaching assistant for multiple Electrical and Computer Engineering courses. Peter enjoys supporting students as they navigate complex systems concepts and sharing industry-level development practices and insights he learned through his work with Red Hat, stating, \u201cI enjoy breaking down difficult concepts, and being a teaching assistant has allowed me to help students through problems and guide them to their own solutions. . .right now in EC427, I share what I\u2019ve learned in industry at Red Hat through my office hours.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To students curious about open-source or student research, Peter offers simple advice: \u201cReach out to professors. Explore. There are so many open-source projects that it\u2019s impossible not to find something you\u2019re interested in.\u201d He emphasizes that one of the most valuable lessons he has learned is that \u201cyou don\u2019t need experience to contribute. . .open-source welcomes everyone, and there is always something you can learn and something you can offer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We congratulate Peter on this incredible achievement and look forward to the continued impact he will make in open-source technology and beyond.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are delighted to announce that Peter Zhao (ENG\u201926) has been selected as this year\u2019s Paul Cormier Red Hat Open Source Scholar. Peter is a Computer Engineering major with a concentration in Machine Learning with a minor in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University\u2019s College of Engineering. This prestigious scholarship, established by Red Hat in honor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18802,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18802"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3249"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3252,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3249\/revisions\/3252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/rhcollab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}