Four Ohio State honors students have been recognized by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program. Juniors Lia Gomez-Perez, Anthony Moussa, Rakesh Murugesan, and Mackenzie Scott were all named 2022 Goldwater Scholars, the most prestigious national award for undergraduate researchers in science, math, and engineering.  Goldwater Scholars receive an award to cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500. 

Mackenzie Scott is a junior honors student, double majoring in astronomy and astrophysics and physics with a minor in history. She aims to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics to conduct research in cosmology and stellar evolution. Mackenzie’s research at OSU is advised by Dr. Michael Lisa. She has also conducted research in collaboration with the University of Utah.

Mackenzie conducts digital stellar intensity interferometry (dSII) studies with the VERITAS telescope array.  She has traveled to the Arizona desert site of the array, to join the team performing observations, and she has characterized photon detectors in the lab at OSU.  Her main focus, however, has been the development of a software analysis infrastructure capable of analyzing the tremendous quantity of data collected—35 terabytes (roughly equivalent to 7,000,000 mp3 songs, or 3,000 HD movies) PER NIGHT of observation!  Using highly parallelized software she co-developed and implemented on the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), she uses quantum correlations between photons measured at separated telescopes, to determine the size of distant stars.  She will be presenting her most recent results at the upcoming meetings of the American Physical Society (APS) and American Astronomical Society (AAS).

In addition, recently Mackenzie Scott traveled to Youngstown, Ohio to give a contributed talk at the Eastern Great Lakes Section of the APS divisional meeting. This was her first external meeting talk, and she was awarded best undergraduate presentation! Congratulations! 

Read more about VERITAS and OSC.

For more information on the Goldwater Scholarship, please visit https://goldwater.scholarsapply.org/. Students interested in applying for the Goldwater Scholarship or other nationally competitive awards should contact fellowships@osu.edu.