Four UW–Madison students awarded prestigious 2024 Goldwater Scholarships

Four University of Wisconsin–Madison students have been named winners of 2024 Goldwater Scholarships, the premier undergraduate scholarship in mathematics, engineering and the natural sciences in the United States.

The students are juniors Katarina Aranguiz and Scott Chang and sophomores Max Khanov and Nathan Wagner.

The scholarship program honors the late Sen. Barry Goldwater and is designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers.

“I’m so proud of these four immensely talented scholars and all they’ve accomplished,” says Julie Stubbs, director of UW’s Office of Undergraduate Academic Awards. “Their success also reflects well on a campus culture that prioritizes hands-on research experiences for our undergraduates and provides strong mentoring in mathematics, engineering and the natural sciences.”

A Goldwater Scholarship provides as much as $7,500 each year for up to two years of undergraduate study. A total of 438 Goldwater Scholars were selected this year from a field of 1,353 students nominated by their academic institutions.

More about UW–Madison’s winners

Junior Katarina Aranguiz of Hartford, Wisconsin

Aranguiz is majoring in biochemistry with a certificate in data science. Aranguiz transferred to UW–Madison after completing her freshman year at UCLA, where she was part of an honors-level academic community that introduces students to cutting-edge biological sciences research. At UW–Madison, Aranguiz works in Professor Chris Todd Hittinger’s genetics lab, which is part of the Wisconsin Energy Institute and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. Building on prior wet lab and genetic engineering experience, Aranguiz leads the lab’s efforts in using machine learning approaches to understand phenotypic variation across diverse yeast species for clinical and industrial applications. Aranguiz received a Sophomore Research Fellowship from the Provost’s Office and an award from the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund recognizing her potential to become a leader in the life sciences. She plans to pursue a PhD in computational biology and a research career furthering the development of sustainable bioproducts.

Junior Scott Chang of Hartland, Wisconsin

Chang is majoring in biology and Spanish with a certificate in statistics. Since his freshman year, Chang has researched the origins and early evolution of life on Earth in Professor Betül Kaçar’s bacteriology lab. He’s earned a Sophomore Research Fellowship from the Provost’s Office and a NASA-funded Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium Undergraduate Research Scholarship. In summer 2023, Chang completed the Adopt-a-Proto-Gene Summer REU at the University of Pittsburgh with Professor Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis, whose lab studies the molecular mechanisms of evolutionary innovation. Chang’s team made a significant discovery leading to a peer-reviewed article published in microPublication Biology, with Chang as co-first author. This summer, Chang will be at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory investigating the properties of the moon Europa. Chang plans to pursue a dual PhD in microbiology and astrobiology.

Sophomore Max Khanov of Stillwater, Oklahoma

Khanov is majoring in computer science. While in high school, Khanov began research with Professor Esra Akbas’s data engineering lab at Oklahoma State University. Though Professor Akbas is now at Georgia State University and Khanov is an undergraduate at UW–Madison, they have continued their research collaborations, most recently presenting the paper “MPool: Motif-Based Graph Pooling” at the 2023 Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. Since spring 2023, Khanov has conducted research with UW–Madison computer science professor Sharon Li, working on a project of his design on aligning large language modes to ensure models meet human objectives and safety considerations. The project was recently accepted to the International Conference on Learning Representations, with Khanov as co-first author. Khanov plans to pursue a PhD in computer science with a research focus on artificial neural networks and machine learning.

Sophomore Nathan Wagner of Madison, Wisconsin

Wagner is majoring in physics and mathematics. Wagner began research in Professor Mark Saffman’s quantum computing lab in spring 2021 as a high school junior. His first-author manuscript, “Benchmarking a Neutral-Atom Quantum Computer” was recently accepted for publication in the International Journal of Quantum Information. In Summer 2023, Wagner started research with the Physics Department’s High Energy Physics Group, working alongside Professor Sridhara Dasu and others on future particle colliders design research. Wagner was invited to present his research at the Department of Physics Board of Visitors meeting in fall 2023. This summer, he will complete a research internship at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, focusing on computational physics. Wagner plans to pursue a PhD in physics and a career at a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory researching novel carbon-neutral energy generation, quantum computing and networking, nuclear photonics and computational physics.

About the Goldwater Scholarship

Congress established the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation in 1986. Goldwater served in the U.S. Senate for over 30 years and challenged Lyndon B. Johnson for the presidency in 1964. A list of past winners from UW–Madison can be found here.