Two undergraduate students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have won prestigious Barry M. Goldwater scholarships for their senior year.
Trent Michael Graham, a junior majoring in LAS physics, and Tim Kevin O'Connor, a junior in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology, were chosen from a pool of applicants across the nation to receive the scholarship for the 2008-2009 academic year.
The scholarship, established by the U.S. Congress in honor of the late Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, is awarded on the basis of academic merit to sophomores and juniors in hopes of encouraging scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. This year's 321 awardees will receive up to $7,500 per year to cover the costs of tuition, fees, books, and room and board.
Graham plans to study optics and quantum information science in graduate school. He has been researching with Paul Kwiat, the University of Illinois Bardeen Professor of Physics, since fall 2006, and is collaborating with Paul Scott Carney, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, on a new approach to vector aberration theory.
O'Connor has explored the evolutionary history and cryptic biodiversity of social wasps in the lab of entomology professor Sydney Cameron since February 2006, and plans to research the evolution of social behavior in graduate school. During this past semester he has been studying with the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica, with support of a Michael Aiken Scholarship and the School of Integrative Biology Enhancement Fund.
Congress created the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program in 1986, and they have become the premier undergraduate scholarship of its kind in the fields of science, mathematics, and engineering. More than 1,000 students applied for the scholarship this year.
Goldwater served the country for 56 years as a soldier and statesman, including 30 years in the U.S. Senate. He died in 1998.
