Two students named Goldwater Scholars

Two undergraduate researchers from Northwestern have earned the 2025 Barry Goldwater Scholarship, an honor that provides support for students who plan to pursue careers in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Between their interests in cutting-edge medical concepts and very old fossils, as Goldwater Scholars, Adithi Adusumilli and Jonathan Chen represent the range of scientific talent essential to maintaining U.S. global competitiveness, according to the Department of Defense (DOD) National Defense Education Programs. The DOD, along with learning tools developer UWorld, partners with the Goldwater Foundation on the scholarship program.

This year, a total of 441 Goldwater Scholars were chosen from 1,350 science, engineering and mathematics undergraduates nominated by 445 colleges and universities across the nation. Many of the scholars have published their research in leading professional journals and presented their work at professional society conferences. Almost all plan to pursue a Ph.D.

“The Goldwater scholarship continues to recognize the brightest undergraduates in the United States who are poised for excellence and prepared to make significant impacts as MD/Ph.D. academic researchers,” said LaTanya Veronica Williams, associate director for STEM in the Office of Fellowships and the campus representative for the program at Northwestern. “Jonathan and Adithi fully embody the prestige of the Goldwater and are already on the path to make great advances in their scientific fields.”

Adithi Adusumilli

Deeply personal experiences influenced Adusumilli’s interest in medicine from a young age, including learning about her mother’s brain tumor and autoimmune disease diagnoses and watching her grandfather struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. In high school, Adusumilli became an EMT and started conducting neuroscience research and, seeing how connected her medical and research insights were, she became torn between two exciting career paths.

Now a third-year neuroscience and data science major (and global health studies minor), Adusumilli found a way to integrate both while at Northwestern and plans to pursue both an M.D. and Ph.D. to care for patients while conducting translational research. As she finishes her time as an undergraduate, she will wrap up a senior thesis and submit a first-author paper detailing her work on motor cortex circuitry, which she has been studying since her first year in the lab of Northwestern assistant professor of neurobiology Andrew Miri.

Looking ahead, Adusumilli sees herself leading a lab at a research hospital focused on uncovering how immune mechanisms contribute to neurodegenerative disease progression.

“In neuroimmunology, I plan to study the intersection of immune and nervous system dysfunction to uncover new patient-centered diagnostics and treatments and ensure those discoveries reach patients who need them, like my mother,” Adusumilli said.

Jonathan Chen

Chen was a self-proclaimed “dinosaur kid” from the moment he saw his first dinosaur skeleton as a three-year-old. When he was old enough to bike by himself, Chen started visiting a gorge near his neighborhood in Coralville, Iowa, where the ground was completely covered by fossilized shells and corals from a 300-million-year-old reef, a timescale that mesmerized him then and now.

At Northwestern, professors have sparked Chen’s desire to pursue a Ph.D. studying prehistoric climate change and then become a professor with a lab group reconstructing the Earth’s climate history. Chen said his advisor, sedimentary geologist Brad Sageman, and research advisor, geochemist Andy Jacobson, both professors in the earth and planetary sciences department, have given him a fuller view of prehistoric worlds that put fossils in context.

Before Chen begins his senior year and the competitive Ph.D. program application process, he will travel this summer to Colorado and Wyoming for a Northwestern-led field course. 

“I want to be a professor because I want to pursue research while being able to pass on knowledge and engage more people with the geosciences, which they may not be introduced to prior to college,” Chen said.

Learn more about the Goldwater Scholarship and other opportunities by contacting Northwestern’s Office of Fellowships.