Three SMBHC Students Named Goldwater Scholars
On behalf of the Office of National Scholarship Advisement, the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College is proud to announce that three SMBHC students, Reinhard (Matt) Knerr, Ethan Lambert, and Alexandria (Ally) Watrous, have been awarded the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship.
The Goldwater is one of the oldest and most prestigious national scholarships in STEM. It supports exceptional sophomores and juniors who show promise in becoming the next generation of research leaders in these fields. This year, 417 scholarships were awarded from a pool of 1,242 outstanding undergraduates nominated by 433 institutions.
Matt, Ethan, and Ally follow in the footsteps of UM Goldwater scholars Ivy Li and Austin Wallace (2021), William Meador and Jax Dallas (2020) and Addison Roush (2019).
Matt Knerr is a junior from Paducah, Kentucky. He is pursuing a degree in Biochemistry, with minors in neuroscience, biological sciences, environmental studies, and psychology. Matt is interested in how biochemistry can be used to explain the physiological changes to our organ system and cell functionality. After graduation from UM, he hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Biochemistry to investigate the underlying biochemical pathways of aging.
Ethan Lambert is a junior from Corinth, Mississippi. He is set to graduate in 2023 with a B.S. in Chemistry with an emphasis in Chemical Physics and a minor in Mathematics. He has three first author papers and co-authorship on a book, all utilizing Raman spectroscopy and quantum computational chemistry as part of his work under the advice of Dr. Nathan Hammer. After graduating next year, he will pursue a Ph.D. in Chemistry with a focus on the study of inter- and intramolecular photoinduced charge transfer events in artificial photosynthetic systems via ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy and anisotropy.
Ally Watrous is our only sophomore to be awarded the Scholarship which will partially fund her junior and senior year at UM. She is from Lexington, Kentucky and is pursuing a B.S. in Chemistry with a Chemical Physics emphasis, a B.A. in Physics and German with minors in French and Math. Ally has enjoyed her research as a member of Dr. Fortenberry’s Computational Astrochemistry Group and participating in the Ole Miss Physical Chemistry REU summer program. She has three publications to date and hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry.
This is the first time UM has had three scholars at once! Congratulations, Matt, Ethan, and Ally!
Want to be a future Goldwater winner? Contact the Office of National Scholarship Advisement at onsa@olemiss.edu.
(Pictured L-R: Reinhard (Matt) Knerr, Ethan Lambert, and Alexandria (Ally) Watrous; Photos by Bill Dabney, Whitney Woods, and courtesy of Ethan Lambert)
