Two Old Dominion University students, Abigail Berardi and Elexiah Smart, have been awarded the Rear Admiral James A. Robb Scholarship from the National Training and Simulation Association. The pair received the honor during the 2025 MODSIM World Conference, where they were each presented with a $5,000 scholarship and attended the event as NTSA guests.
Both Berardi and Smart are pursuing dual majors in modeling and simulation engineering and electrical engineering.
“I'm grateful for the scholarship itself, but especially for the opportunity to attend the MODSIM World 2025 conference, which allowed me to connect with professionals, discover a broader range of interests held by the community, and begin building relationships that will benefit me throughout my career,” said Berardi.
“RADM Robb's leadership in advancing the modeling and simulation field was significant, and with my background as a former active-duty service member in the Navy, I appreciated the connection to his Navy service and the values he carried forward into this community,” she added.
, Berardi is working with faculty members, Jim Leathrum, Ph.D. and Yuzhong Shen, Ph.D. on an ongoing research initiative exploring how large language models, such as ChatGPT, can be used to write simulation software.
“The specific focus of my research is how to design prompts, the instructions we give the AI, in a very structured way so that the code it produces is not only fast, but also reliable and accurate,” she explained. “We've been testing this prompting structure by asking the AI to generate things like sorting algorithms and random number generators, then measuring how well they compared to well-known and accepted human-written versions.”
Smart is involved in the project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and led by Masha Sosonkina, Ph.D. The project focuses on expanding cybersecurity education and research through a train-the-trainer program that builds advanced cyberinfrastructure skills for integration with research, teaching, and learning activities in cybersecurity and related disciplines.
Smart’s interests include virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) and the use of video game software in real-world industry applications, such as creating training software.
“Receiving this scholarship was such a wonderful opportunity because, regardless of the money, I was able to attend the MODSIM World conference and get more exposure to the industry,” Smart said.