Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Three from MIT have been named Goldwater Scholars for 2024–25

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MIT students Ben Lou, Srinath Mahankali and Kenta Suzuki have been selected to receive Barry Goldwater Scholarships for the 2024–25 academic year. They are among just 438 recipients nationwide, selected on the basis of academic merit from an estimated pool of more than 5,000 sophomore and junior college students, approximately 1,350 of whom have been nominated by their academic institution to apply for the scholarship.

Since 1989, the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation has awarded nearly 11,000 Goldwater Scholarships to support students who intend to pursue academic careers in science, mathematics and engineering and have the potential to become leaders in their fields. Former scholars have won an impressive range of prestigious postgraduate fellowships. Nearly all of them, including three MIT graduates, intend to pursue PhDs in their field of research.

Ben Lou

Ben Lou is a third-year student from San Diego, California, majoring in Physics and Mathematics and Philosophy.

“My research interests span a variety of disciplines,” says Lou. “I want to draw from a wide range of topics in mathematics and physics and find novel connections between them to push the boundaries of knowledge.”

Since January 2022, he has been collaborating with Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science, and Hudson Loughlin, a PhD student in the LIGO group, which studies the detection of gravitational waves. Lou works with them to advance quantum measurements and better understand quantum gravity.

“Ben has tremendous intellectual strength and works with extraordinary independence,” Mavalvala writes in his letter of recommendation. “I have no doubt that he has a distinguished career in physics ahead of him.”

Lou, for his part, is grateful to Mavalvali and Loughlin, as well as all of his research mentors who have supported him on his research path. These include MIT professors Alan Guth and Barton Zwiebach, who introduced him to quantum physics, as well as his first-year advisor, Richard Price; current advisor, Janet Conrad; Elijah Bodish and Roman Bezrukavnikov in the Department of Mathematics; and David W. Brown of the San Diego Math Club.

As for his future career goals, Lou wants to become a professor of theoretical physics and study what he calls “fundamental aspects of reality” while inspiring students to love math and physics.

In addition to his research, Lou is currently vice president of the Assistive Technology Club at MIT and is actively involved in raising money for research into spinal muscular atrophy. In the future, he would like to continue his philanthropic activities and employ his personal experience to advise a company in the assistive technology industry.

Srinath Mahankali

Srinath Mahankali is a third-year student from Modern York majoring in computer science.

As of June 2022, Mahankali is an undergraduate researcher at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Working with Pulkit Agrawal, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and head of the Improbable AI Lab, Mahankali conducts research on training robots. His current focus is on training four-legged robots to move in an energy-efficient manner and training agents to interact in environments with minimal feedback. But in the future, he would like to develop robots that can perform sports tasks such as gymnastics.

“The experience of talking about research with Srinath is similar to talking to the top graduate students in my group,” Agrawal writes in his recommendation letter. “He is fearless, willing to take risks, persistent, creative and capable of achieving success.”

Before coming to MIT, Mahankali was a 2021 Regeneron STS Scholar, which is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards for math and science students. In 2020, he was also a participant in the MIT PRIMES program, studying objective functions in optimization problems under the supervision of Yunan Yang, assistant professor of mathematics at Cornell University.

“I am deeply grateful to all of my research advisors for their invaluable mentoring and guidance,” says Mahankali, thanking graduate students Zhang-Wei Hong and Gabe Margolis, as well as Brandeis assistant professor of mathematics Promit Ghosal and all the PRIMES program organizers. “I am also very grateful to all the members of the Improbable AI Lab for their support, encouragement and willingness to help and discuss any questions I may have.”

In the future, Mahankali wants to obtain a PhD and one day run her own robotics and artificial intelligence laboratory.

Kenta Suzuki

Kenta Suzuki is a third-year mathematics student at Bloomfield Hills University in Michigan and Tokyo in Japan.

Suzuki is currently collaborating with mathematics professor Roman Bezrukavnikov on research at the intersection of number theory and representation, using geometric methods to represent p-adic groups. Suzuki had also previously collaborated with mathematics professors Wei Zhang and Zhiwei Yun, crediting the latter with inspiring him to pursue research in representation theory.

In his recommendation letter, Yun writes, “Kenta is the best undergraduate student I have ever worked with in terms of his combination of raw talent, mathematical maturity, and research ability.”

Before coming to MIT, Suzuki was a finalist for the Yau Science Award USA in 2020, won gold in mathematics, and was named a Davidson Institute Fellows program honoree in 2021. He also participated in the MIT PRIMES program in 2020. Suzuki credits his PRIMES Mentor, Michael Zieve of the University of Michigan gave him his first taste of mathematical research. Additionally, he thanked all of his math mentors, including the organizers of the summer undergraduate research program at MIT.

After MIT, Suzuki plans to pursue a PhD in pure mathematics, continue research in representation theory and number theory, and one day teach at a research institution.

Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program The Barry Goldwater Medal was established by the United States Congress in 1986 to honor Senator Barry Goldwater, a soldier and national leader who served the country for 56 years. Winners receive scholarships of up to $7,500 per year to cover costs related to tuition, room and board, fees and books.

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