Dumfries native wins Knight-Hennessy scholarship, Naval Academy

U.S. Naval Academy Midshipman 1st Class (senior) Alex Romano, 22, of Dumfries, Virginia, was recently named a 2023 Knight-Hennessy Scholar. The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program provides full funding for students to pursue a graduate degree at Stanford University.

Romano is one of 85 scholars selected for the program’s sixth cohort of students. More than 7,000 candidates competed for one of the 85 scholarships awarded. He intends to pursue a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford School of Engineering.

Romano is an aerospace engineering major who is scheduled to commission later this month as a surface warfare officer. As a midshipman, he conducted independent research on the Distance Simulation Method, which aims to create a variable method to conduct long-range testing of laser wireless power transfer systems on Earth in a vacuum environment.

Romano has been invited to present his research to multiple boards and conferences, including the DoD Space Experiment Review Board, where his project ranked higher than several multimillion-dollar projects from professional military laboratories. His project has been offered two launches to space by NASA and the U.S. Space Force and will be tested on the International Space Station.

Outside the classroom, Romano is a Navy Men’s Lightweight Crew team member and served as the 2nd Battalion Public Affairs Officer. In 2022, Romano had the opportunity to travel to Japan and interact with Admiral Hideki Yuasa of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, as well as students and leaders from the Japanese Self-Defense Academy and other Japanese universities.

Founded in 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy today is a four-year service academy that prepares midshipmen morally, mentally and physically to be professional officers in the naval service. More than 4,400 men and women representing every state in the U.S. and several foreign countries comprise the student body, known as the Brigade of Midshipmen.

U.S. News and World Reports have recognized the Naval Academy as a top five undergraduate engineering school and a top-25 best liberal arts college. Midshipmen learn from military and civilian instructors and participate in intercollegiate varsity sports and extracurricular activities. They also study subjects such as leadership, ethics, small arms, drill, seamanship and navigation, tactics, naval engineering and weapons, cyber security, and military law.

Upon graduation, midshipmen earn a Bachelor of Science degree in a choice of 25 different subject majors and go on to serve at least five years of service as commissioned officers in the U.S. Navy or U.S. Marine Corps.

For more information on the Knight-Hennessy Scholars, click here.
For more information about the Naval Academy, please visit usna.edu.

— Press release