For the second year in a row, an Ohio State Astronomy student has won a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship. Anya Phillips works on ASAS-SN variable stars with Professor Christopher Kochanek to understand their fundamental properties and how they correlate with each other. Anya will be attending the Harvard CfA REU program this summer.

Ohio State won four awards this year from an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, 1267 natural science, engineering, and mathematics students. These students were nominated by 427 academic institutions to compete for the 2023 Goldwater scholarships. Of the students who reported, 197 of the Scholars are men, 203 are women, and virtually all intend to obtain a Ph.D. as their highest degree objective. Forty-eight Scholars are mathematics and computer science majors, 308 are majoring in the natural sciences, and 57 are majoring in engineering.  Many of the Scholars have published their research in leading professional journals and have presented their work at professional society conferences.

Goldwater Scholars have gone on to win an impressive array of prestigious post-graduate fellowships, among which are the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Rhodes Scholarship, Marshall Scholarship, Churchill Scholarship, Hertz Fellowship, DOE Computation Science Graduate Fellowship, and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship.

The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established by Public Law 99-661 on November 14, 1986. The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers in the fields of the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics. The Goldwater Scholarship is the preeminent undergraduate award of its type in these fields.