Three Students Earn Goldwater Scholarships

Posted on April 17, 2015

Three Carolina students have received 2015 Goldwater Scholarships, a prestigious award that provides up to $7,500 per year for educational expenses to sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue careers in science, mathematics, engineering or computer disciplines.

The students are Larry Han, a junior from Apex; Anya Katsevich, a sophomore from Oviedo, Fla.; and Mary Kaitlyn Tsai, a junior from Raleigh.

The scholars are selected on the basis of academic merit. In 2015, 260 recipients were chosen from a field of 1,206 mathematics, science and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide.

Han is a Morehead-Cain Scholar double majoring in biostatistics and mathematics with a minor in chemistry. He studied abroad in spring 2014 as a Phillips Ambassador at the National University of Singapore. He also is in the Honors Carolina program, with multiple publications and presentations to his credit. He was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa this spring.

Han has researched public health issues with the International Diagnostics Center at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Spatial Health Research Group and the UNC Project-China Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases. He serves as a teaching assistant and coordinating committee member for the Foreign Policy Association at UNC and is co-founder of the Corpore Sano undergraduate medical journal. Han also works as a development coordinator for Social Entrepreneurship for Sexual Health Global, developing fundraising protocol and disbursement of funds to promote HIV testing in China and Hong Kong.

Katsevich, a mathematics major and German minor, is conducting high-dimensional data collection research in the department of statistics. A believer in the benefits of big data analysis, she is using her research to find practical applications of mathematical theory. As a freshman, Katsevich founded and presided over the Carolina Math Club and participates in Carolina’s German Club.

Tsai, a chemistry major with a focus in biochemistry and a medical anthropology minor, participates in UNC’s undergraduate research program conducting complex chemical reactions and binding studies of amino acids and peptides. She volunteers at UNC Hospitals in cardiology and pediatrics in addition to coaching in the Girls on the Run program at Ephesus Elementary School, an endeavor that teaches girls character-building through running. Tsai was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa this spring.

Tsai has worked as a research assistant in the radiation oncology department and the Institute for Transportation Research and Education.

UNC has produced 44 Goldwater Scholars, including 30 since fall 2000. The last time three Chapel Hill students were named recipients in the same year was 2010.

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