Columbia is proud to announce that four students have been awarded 2025 Goldwater Scholarships, the preeminent undergraduate award in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. The Goldwater Foundation is a federally endowed agency established by Public Law 99-661 on November 14, 1986. The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers in the fields of the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics.
From an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, 1,350 science, engineering, and mathematics students were nominated by 445 academic institutions to compete for the 2025 Goldwater scholarships, which were awarded to 441 students. Columbia congratulates its four 2025 Goldwater Scholarship recipients!
Luca Abu El-Haj CC'26: Raised in Philadelphia, PA, Luca is majoring in Physics. His interests lie in theoretical cosmology both in formal aspects of gravity, and more concrete data driven probes of new physics. He has worked on observational astrophysics projects at Columbia with Professor Chuck Hailey and Dr. Kaya Mori, and has worked on computational neutrino physics with Dr. Steven Gardiner at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory through the SULI program. Luca plans to pursue a research career and obtain a PhD in theoretical physics.
Danielle Maydan SEAS'26
: Hailing from Riverdale, NY, Danielle is majoring in Computer Science and pursuing the premedical track. Since her freshman year, Danielle has conducted computational biology research in the field of single-cell genomics, first in the laboratory of Dr. Elham Azizi at Columbia and now in the laboratory of Dr. Dana Pe’er at Memorial Sloan Kettering. In the future, Danielle aspires to pursue an MD degree and dedicate her career to both clinical practice and biomedical research guided by clinical insights.
Luca Nashabeh CC'26: Hailing from the California Bay Area, Luca is a Rabi scholar majoring in Physics and Mathematics. Luca's work with experimental scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) in the Pasupathy lab at Columbia has aimed at teasing out unique quantum phenomena in 2D crystals—a class of materials that generalizes graphene and has been an excellent platform for strong quantum behavior. Luca's theoretical work with Héctor Ochoa of Columbia on the effect of strain in multilayer graphene moiré heterostructures has similarly aimed at understanding the origin of interesting quantum behavior in 2D systems. Luca plans to pursue a PhD in condensed matter physics.
Steven Yu SEAS'26: Originally from Jiangsu, China, Steven is majoring in biomedical engineering with a minor in computer science. Outside of the classroom, Steven works in the AlQuraishi Lab at Columbia's Irving Medical Center, where he is developing methods to predict protein conformational ensembles to better understand protein folding dynamics and potentially aid drug discovery. Looking ahead, Steven aspires to pursue a PhD in computational biology to combine his interests in computational approaches and biological systems.
Columbia students interested in learning more about applying for the Goldwater Scholarship program are encouraged to connect with Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.
