KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (TVC) — Samuel Barbour and Jai Mehta have been awarded the Goldwater Scholarship award, one of the most prestigious STEM Awards in the nation. 

 This scholarship is given to college sophomores and juniors, recognizing their academic and leadership achievements.  

The money is intended to be used to fund future research projects the students take part in, and focuses on natural Sciences, mathematics, and engineering projects.  

This year, the award was only given to 454 students, and over 1,400 students across the nation applied for the scholarship.  

Mehta describes the award given to him as an, “honor,” but also gives a lot of the credit to the people that helped him get to this point.  

“It is more so is like a reflection of the people that have supported me.” He said.  “And ill say this time and time again, like, I wouldn’t be here, either physically or just generally, without the support of all my mentors and researchers that have worked with me.” 

 Right now, Mehta is on a research internship at MIT, and intends to use the money to fund a Ph.D, and more research he intends to pursue.  

Mehta is an undergraduate junior, studying computer science and computational biology. He is additionally studying biomedical machine learning. He has also added on two minors, pre-health professions and machine learning.  

Since 2010, 35 UT students have been awarded the Goldwater Scholarship; including the 2026 scholars. Congratulations to both students!