Supporting Students in STEM

Research & Inquiry

Three Smith College students have been named 2026 Goldwater Scholars, a highly prestigious recognition for undergraduate researchers

Photos by Jessica Scranton

BY BARBARA SOLOW

Published April 27, 2026

For Ada Comstock Scholar Mary-Alice Wieland, being awarded a Goldwater scholarship to support her research in STEM is an important “signifier” to graduate schools and future colleagues that “I’m serious about research.”

Fellow recipient Ashley Cheng ’27 says she looks forward to joining a community of scholars who are “super passionate about research.”

And for Sophia Liu ’27, being selected as Smith’s third 2026 Goldwater scholar “means that someone else believes in me. It’s an encouragement.”

The three Smith students were selected for the prestigious scholarship from an estimated pool of more than 5,000 college sophomores and juniors nominated by 482 academic institutions. The Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation—named in honor of the late Senator Barry Goldwater—provides up to $7,500 annually to students pursuing research careers in STEM. The 2026–27 cohort includes 454 students interested in medicine, engineering, computer science, and other STEM disciplines.

Smith has achieved notable success with the Goldwater program, with multiple students receiving scholarships in previous years.

“Since 2014, Smith has had one year with four students selected and two consecutive years with three students,” says Andrew Dausch, Smith’s director of Fellowships and Postgraduate Scholarships. “Having three of the five students we nominated chosen this year for scholarships speaks to the quality of our students, the mentorship they receive from faculty at Smith, and the strength of our science curriculum.”

Professor of Chemistry Kevin Shea, who has taught and mentored recent Goldwater recipients, says, “Our faculty’s willingness to help students start research early in their Smith careers has helped them become accomplished scientists as undergraduates.”

Fellow mentor Halie Rando, assistant professor of computer science, agrees that research is a valued part of education at Smith. “Our students are eager to explore how their coursework can have an impact beyond the classroom,” she says. “Research is one powerful way to do that, especially in a community where so many faculty members share those same values.”

Here’s what Smith’s three newest Goldwater Scholars had to say about their research and their scholarship awards.

Ashley Cheng ’27

Biochemistry major

Ashley Cheng in a lab at Smith, holding a pipette and wearing a white lab coat

“I decided to apply after spending an afternoon kayaking in Paradise Pond with another girl from my hometown, who won the award last year and encouraged me to go for it. I also got a lot of support from my research mentor, [Associate Professor of Engineering] Sarah Moore. My research in her lab focuses on studying engineered proteins for targeted cancer therapy development. I investigate proteins already known to have therapeutic effects to better understand their anti-cancer mechanisms.

“I’m grateful for how accessible Smith makes research. It has opened doors for me to participate in a program at Columbia last summer and conduct research at MIT this summer. I’m also thankful for the opportunity Kevin Shea gave me to TA for organic chemistry courses. I love sharing what I love and learning from the students as well. I’m not exactly sure where I’ll end up, but in whatever context, I hope there’s room to engage in those same conversations and to have a lifelong, continuous learning experience. I’ve seen how collaborative scientific research is. All this knowledge stems from so many labs and so many different people from different institutions and countries. Being able to join this community and the network of Goldwater Scholars—it’s just really nice to see how many people are super passionate about research.”

Sophia Liu ’27

Biological sciences major

“I’ve always had a passion for discovering the natural world and thinking about why things happen the way they happen. I’m studying embryonic development, and just coming into the [Baressi] lab and seeing these tiny zebrafish and how they start moving after just 18 hours and developing organs—it’s amazing. How does one group of cells know to become the head and others know to become the tail? I’ve been thinking a lot about basic research, where important foundational knowledge can come from simply being curious and asking, ‘What does this show me?’ and letting the data guide the way—though this approach often feels far removed from practical implementations. Considering that government research is being defunded, and there’s a lot of public distrust, I feel it's important to keep this curiosity while considering practical relevance.

“I want to do something to help people understand the importance and relevance of research to everyone’s lives. I’m taking a course this semester called Neuroscience Outreach where we’re going into high school classrooms and designing activities to guide students into asking scientific questions. The idea is to make them feel like science isn’t something that’s siloed or secretive. Science can be for everyone. For me, applying to Goldwater was a way of saying ‘I believe in myself,’ and getting it means someone else believes in me, too.”

Sophia Liu in front of a microscope, looking at slides on a computer monitor

Mary-Alice Wieland AC

Computer science major

Goldwater Scholar Mary-Alice Wieland poses underneath a table in the computer lab with her laptop at the ready

“I didn’t have a very successful academic career in high school, but I always knew I wanted to finish college and get a degree. In community college, I took a programming class and math courses and just fell in love with them. Research has been a really big part of my experience at Smith—a lot of doors have opened for me that I wasn’t expecting. Right now, I’m in [Assistant Professor of Computer Science] Michael Robson’s lab, which is a high-performance scientific computing lab. My project is about reproducibility, which is an issue across scientific disciplines: Can you hand your research to another scientist who can recreate it and get similar results? That’s an especially hard task in computer science because you’re using such intensive and complicated tools.

“For me, there is something about research that is about the greater scientific community and the greater good, and it’s given me a really positive experience of academia. My biggest dream, what I’m really passionate about, is mentorship and being the person who has been modeled to me by my mentors. I’m a non-traditional student, not someone who grew up in the sciences. And being a woman, math and science wasn’t immediately taught as a path I could take. But being at Smith, I’ve had people look me in the eye and say, ‘You can do this.’ My biggest dream is to be that person for someone else.”