Four Students Nominated for Goldwater Scholarship
The Barry Goldwater Scholarship is a highly competitive, merit-based award for outstanding students in mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering who are interested in pursuing a career in research. The premier award for undergraduate students in STEM fields, the scholarship was established by Congress in 1986 to honor Senator Barry Goldwater, who showed a keen interest in science and technology during his 30 years in the U.S. Senate.
This year, Northeastern was honored to nominate four students for the Goldwater Scholarship.
Thurston Brevett COE’18
Electrical and computer engineering major Thurston Brevett began working with Professor Carey Rappaport at the Awareness and Localization of Explosives-Related Threats (ALERT) lab, a Homeland Security Center of Excellence, during his first semester at Northeastern. Thurston’s ongoing project at the ALERT lab involves detecting threats by analyzing the reflectivity of various materials and using millimeter wave whole body scanning radar. His work has already earned him the first place at the National Society of Black Engineers’ Region 1 Technical Research Exhibition. On co-op at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Thurston worked on a project to mitigate the effects of wind turbines on radar systems. A University Scholar and member of the Honors Program, Thurston is also committed to giving back to the community and is a founder of Bits and Bots, a student group that teaches robotics after school in Boston Public Libraries.
Trevor Gale COE’19
Computer engineering major Trevor Gale has embarked upon multiple research experiences since arriving on Northeastern’s campus from his home state of Maine. Since joining Professor David Kaeli’s Computer Architecture Research (NUCAR) Lab, Trevor has contributed to projects touching on topics including reliability, workload characterization, computer architecture, high-performance computing, general purpose graphics processing units, and machine learning. Trevor has also gained experience interacting with some of the NUCAR Lab’s industry partners to understand their needs and the principles of use-inspired research. A member of the university’s Honors Program, Trevor plans to pursue a Ph.D. in computer engineering to engage in academic research.
Keith Harrigian COS’17
Los Angeles native and Honors student Keith Harrigian wants to harness the power of machine learning to improve our understanding of neural networks operative in neurological diseases affecting motor function. A mathematics major with minors in physics and music, Keith is a research volunteer in Professor Dagmar Sternad’s Action Lab, which studies the control and coordination of goal-oriented human movement in the context of complex object manipulation. In spring 2015, Keith received a Provost’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavor Award to support his work in the Action Lab. During a co-op at Legendary Entertainment, a media and film production company, Keith worked as a quantitative research analyst, approaching big data from a new angle. He aspires to earn a Ph.D. in statistics.
Benjamin Moran COS’18
The recipient of a 2015 Goldwater Honorable Mention, University Scholar and Honors student Benjamin Moran came to Northeastern with a passion for marine biology, even though he grew up far from the ocean in Ohio. Upon his arrival, he immersed himself in research, joining a team that was working to assemble a de novo central nervous system transcriptome of the brown ghost knifefish. Next, Ben won a Scholars Independent Research Fellowship to spend Summer 2014 undertaking a project on the expression of the bloodthirsty gene in zebrafish. He completed a second co-op at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, where he engaged in cutting-edge marine science research, and is currently enrolled in Northeastern’s Three Seas Program. Ben won the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hollings Scholarship in 2015 and plans to obtain a Ph.D. in biological oceanography.