Two From UNC Win Goldwater Scholarships

Posted on April 6, 2011

Two juniors — Timothy Palpant of Raleigh and Varvara Zemskova of Maryland — have won 2011 Goldwater Scholarships. The awards go to outstanding college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering.

The two Carolina students are among a total of 275 award recipients announced by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program of Springfield, Va. Colleges and universities had nominated 1,095 students.

The scholarship provides up to $7,500 a year for educational expenses. Sophomores receive two years of support; juniors, one year. Scholars are chosen for intellectual curiosity and intensity and potential for significant future contributions in their fields.

This year’s UNC recipients bring the number of Goldwater Scholars from Carolina to 38 since the first awards were made in 1989.

Palpant, who graduated in 2008 from Leesville Road High School in Raleigh, won a Carolina Scholarship to UNC, a merit award funded by donors and awarded by the University. He is majoring in biology and applied mathematics. His career goals are to conduct research using mathematics to seek solutions to biological questions and to teach at a university.

Jason Reed, chair of UNC’s Goldwater nominations committee, wrote in a recommendation letter that Palpant has done molecular biology experiments and analyzed his experimental data computationally. Palpant works largely independently on his own research project, and his work often is on par with that of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, wrote Reed, an associate professor of biology.

“Timothy Palpant has exceptional intellect, demonstrated research ability and the wisdom to see that a combination of experiment, bioinformatics and mathematical modeling can lead to important advances in biology,” Reed wrote.

In science, modeling concerns finding mathematical expressions that fit a problem. Equations are combined to form models that can approximate outcomes from collected data. Models also can simulate future events.

Zemskova, who graduated in 2008 from Poolesville High School in Poolesville, Md., also won a Carolina Scholarship to UNC. Zemskova, who is majoring in environmental science and mathematics, hopes to earn a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering and become a professor.

Zemskova has undertaken several research projects about stream flow and watersheds, Reed wrote in Zemskova’s recommendation letter. She has gathered data from sources including satellite images and reservoir measurements and learned to model water flow mathematically, he said.

“Even as a freshman, she displayed the intelligence and maturity typical of graduate students,” Reed wrote. “Varvara Zemskova is cultured, brilliant and motivated to work on problems that will become acutely important as the climate changes and human populations increase around the world.”

Congress established the program in 1986 to honor the late Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, who served in the U.S. Senate for 30 years.

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More online…

• Three Students Win Goldwater Scholarships
  News report from April 2010
• Two From Carolina Win Goldwater Scholarships
  News report from April 2009
• Junior Studying Environmental Justice Wins Udall Scholarship
  News report from April 2010
• Truman Scholar Named, to Study Media and Politics
  News report from April 2010

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