KU nominates 5 students for Goldwater Scholarship

LAWRENCE — Five University of Kansas students who have been actively involved in undergraduate research during their university careers are competing for Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, regarded as the premier undergraduate award to encourage excellence in science, engineering and mathematics. 

The students’ applications are coordinated by the Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships. 

KU’s 2025 nominees: 

• Arthur Benson, a junior in chemical engineering with a concentration in data science engineering and minor in music. 
• Carter Gray, a junior in applied computing with a concentration in chemistry. 
• Emily Messenger, a pre-medicine sophomore in applied computing with a concentration in biology engineering and behavioral neuroscience. 
• Gabrielle Bolfing, a junior in astronomy and geology with a concentration in general geology, minoring in astrobiology. 
• Tatum Aikin, a junior in microbiology with a minor in women, gender & sexuality studies. 

Eighty KU students have received Goldwater scholarships since they first were awarded in 1989. Congress established the program in 1986 in tribute to the retired U.S. senator from Arizona and to ensure a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers. 

The Goldwater Foundation trustees will announce the 2026 winners in late March. The scholarships cover eligible expenses for undergraduate tuition, fees, books, and room and board, up to $7,500 annually. Each year the trustees award approximately 450 scholarships. 

Only sophomore- and junior-level students with outstanding academic records, significant research experience and high potential for careers in mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering are eligible for nomination. Nominees submitted applications that included essays related to their career goals and research experience as well as three faculty recommendations. Students interested in applying next year should contact the Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships via email at curf@ku.edu. The next application cycle will begin in fall 2026. 

Brief descriptions of the nominees’ research experience, organizational involvement, and career plans follow: 

Arthur Benson 

Arthur Benson, from Lawrence, is the son of David and Nadya Benson and a graduate of Lawrence Free State High School. He is majoring in chemical engineering with a concentration in data science and plans to pursue a doctorate in chemical engineering focused on sustainable energy systems. Benson began his research with a project on refrigerant flammability testing under the supervision of KU faculty member Mark Shiflett, leading to a publication in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. He then completed a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates at the University of California, Irvine, under the guidance of Erdem Sasmaz, where his work on sustainable hydrogen production was featured in a manuscript under review by the Journal of CO2 Utilization. He presented these projects at regional and national American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) student conferences and is now conducting molecular modeling of high-energy-density batteries under the mentorship of KU faculty member Yiling Nan. 

Benson has held a variety of leadership positions at KU, including treasurer of the AIChE student chapter, student liaison for the Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering, president of the chess club and honors seminar assistant. As a member of the Madison and Lila Self Engineering Leadership Fellows Program, he has also coordinated a community service project and a high school chemical engineering competition. In recognition of his strong academic performance, Benson was named the 2024-2025 Outstanding Sophomore in Chemical Engineering. 

Carter Gray 

Carter Gray, from Olathe, is the son of John and Maureen Gray and a graduate of Olathe North High School. Carter is majoring in applied computing with a focus in chemistry. He plans to pursue a doctorate in biophysics and work on cutting-edge research to understand protein mutations. Carter started his research journey in high school in the Swint-Kruse lab at KU Medical Center, where he worked on developing a set of novel transcription factors for synthetic biology. He has now submitted a first author manuscript currently under review at the journal PLOS One. 

Motivated to continue his work in the Swint-Kruse lab, Carter spearheaded a collaboration with the Egan lab at KU Lawrence. During this time Carter was named a 2025-2026 Data Science scholar from K-INBRE, funding his second project that works to identify patient-derived mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 main protease to further understand pathogen evolution. Carter has presented his research at the 2024 and 2025 Gibbs biothermodynamics conferences in Carbondale, Illinois, and has been invited as a speaker at the K-INBRE 2026 annual symposium. 

Outside of research, Carter is a University Scholar, a SELF Leadership Fellow, a member of the KU Marching Jayhawks, treasurer of the KU ASBMB chapter, and he is a member of the ACM chapter at KU. He has also received an Undergraduate Research Award and the KU Chancellor Scholarship for academic merit. 

Emily Messenger 

Emily Messenger, from Lenexa, is the daughter of Heather and Jeff Messenger and a graduate of Olathe Northwest High School. She is a transfer student from Northeastern University, where she studied cognitive psychology and large language models as a member of the Language and Mind Lab. She was a Summer Scholar in the Advanced Neuroimaging Lab at Children’s Mercy Research Institute, where she created several processing pipelines to systematically elicit the optimal set of parameters for aligning multisite pediatric rs-fMRI datasets, with the goal of analyzing normative and non-normative neurodevelopmental trajectories among infants. After presenting this work, she submitted her first-author abstract to an international conference for peer review and publication. She now plans to expand this work in the new year as an intern at the Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center. At the KU Institute for Information Sciences (I2s), she is also working under the guidance of KU faculty member Suzanne Shontz to leverage machine-learning techniques for the characterization of cardiac MRI data. She was awarded an Undergraduate Research Award to continue this work and has also received the Mount Oread Scholarship for transfer students. 

Outside of the lab, Messenger works as a student ambassador for the Office of Admissions and is a member of the Association for Computer Machinery and Women in Computing student organizations. She is currently founding a new student organization in hopes of promoting charitable software development and aspires to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. in computational neuroscience and clinical neuroradiology. 

Gabrielle Bolfing 

Gabrielle Bolfing, from Eureka, Missouri, is the daughter of Kim and Scott Bolfing and a graduate of Eureka High School. She is dual majoring in astronomy and geology with a minor in astrobiology. She aspires to pursue a doctorate in planetary science with focus in either atmospheric chemistry or geologic processes and mineralogical deposits. In her time on the Lawrence campus, she is president of KU’s chapter of the Society of Physics Students and is active in the department’s public outreach initiative. She is also an active member of Crossfield ExoLab research group, researching exoplanet atmospheric chemistry, currently on sub-Neptune atmospheric modeling. She has also been an honor roll student since fall 2023 in addition to receiving multiple awards, including the KU Excellence Scholarship and the Ralph C. Lamb, Jack and Lavon Brosseau, Joseph Minton Patterson and Frederick T. Holden scholarships.   

Tatum Aikin 

Tatum Aikin, from Westwood, is the daughter of Abby Parker and Brandon Aikin and a graduate of Shawnee Mission East High School. She plans to pursue a doctorate in immunology and conduct research pertaining to autoimmune diseases and sex-based differences in immunological conditions. She has conducted research on Type I diabetes in the Markiewicz Lab at KU Medical Center as a K-INBRE Summer Scholar. She has also received and Undergraduate Research Award and was chosen to be a K-INBRE Summer Scholar once more for the Orozco Lab at KU, where she is investigating how an autoimmunity-associated gene variant impacts the function of the immune cell macrophages, examining if altered macrophage function could change other aspects of the immune response in specific disease contexts. She has presented this work at the 2025 Autumn Immunology Conference, earning an Undergraduate Award for her abstract “Trends in Immunology” and is additionally presenting this work at the 2026 K-INBRE Symposium. She has also received an additional Undergraduate Research Award to continue this work and has been recognized as a KU Chancellor’s Merit Scholar.