May 29, 2026

Two Honors students named 2026 Goldwater Scholars

We are delighted to celebrate two outstanding Honors students – Lorenzo McCleese and Rachel Yin, both 2026 recipients of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship.  The Goldwater is one of the nation’s most prestigious undergraduate awards, which recognizes and supports students intending to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics.

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Lorenzo McCleese, a third-year Departmental Honors student, studies Environmental Science & Terrestrial Resource Management. Lorenzo first learned about undergraduate research in action when he attended a Dawg Daze event hosted by the Office of Undergraduate Research. Inspired by the experiences of other UW students, Lorenzo undertook his first research position studying anthropogenic pollutants in the Duwamish River. Based on this experience, he knew that he wanted to pursue research more.

Lorenzo is passionate about how climate change impacts research, particularly within vulnerable ecosystems and for frontline communities of color. He is currently working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center, where he examines oral histories from Alaskan Indigenous and rural fishers to better understand how climate change is experienced, described, and felt within critical coastal communities. He also works with the University of California at Davis to study the presence and efficacy of climate refuges for the red abalone along the Californian coast. This summer, he will  research at the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Monterey, California where he will work on yet another computationally-focused project centered on climate impacts on marine ecosystems.

Lorenzo plans to pursue a PhD in Earth Systems Science or a related field, continuing to study climate change impacts on threatened ecosystems using computational tools. Reflecting on the Goldwater Scholarship, he shared that the award provides both community and support. “The Goldwater Scholarship grants me access to an invaluable repository of professionals in and out of my field,” he said, adding that the funding also helps relieve financial pressures as a self-funded student pursuing graduate and fellowship opportunities.

Lorenzo credits the UW Honors Program with giving him the flexibility to continue research during the academic year through research credit opportunities. “I’ve found that the most growth I’ve had has been within research,” he explained. “It has pushed me as a thinker and scholar in ways I didn’t expect.”

For students hoping to pursue research, Lorenzo encourages them to lean on the support systems around them. “You don’t have to figure it all out on your own,” he shared. “In my experience, I’ve been surrounded by staff and faculty who have wanted me to succeed.”

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Rachel Yin is a third-year Interdisciplinary Honors student studying Bioengineering and Neuroscience. Her first exposure to research came in her junior year of high school, where she studied the volumetric segmentation of the C. elegans pharyngeal nervous system. As she watched intricate neurite trajectories form day by day, she found herself asking more and more questions about how behavior emerges from structure and organization. During her first quarter at the UW, she took NEUSCI 490, a computational neuroscience seminar course, which expanded her curiosity even further. “Being part of the course helped me realize that the questions I had been asking about the 20 neurons in the C. elegans pharyngeal nervous system could be pursued at a much larger scale. Seeing how much was still left to understand made me certain that research was where I wanted to be,” Rachel said. 

Rachel is most passionate about systems and computational neuroscience, especially the question of how the microscopic organization of circuits gives rise to macroscopic dynamics of the entire brain. In Professor Nicholas Steinmetz’s lab, she has worked on quantifying discrepancies between mouse brain atlases and the in vivo brain.

Rachel plans to pursue a PhD focused on systems and computational neuroscience while also developing interactive tools that help researchers visualize and analyze neural circuits across multiple scales. In response to her Goldwater award, she shared, “Receiving the recognition has motivated me to continue being the kind of curious and driven learner I aspire to be, and to think more ambitiously about the questions I want to pursue.” 

As an out-of-state student, Rachel says the Honors community helped make a large university feel more navigable. Through Honors, she found mentors and peers whose interdisciplinary curiosity encouraged her to think more expansively about her own interests. “I realized that my interests in engineering and neuroscience didn’t have to live in separate boxes,” she explained.

Her advice to students interested in research mirrors the same curiosity that first drew her in: “Don’t be afraid to take that big step. Research may appear to be an intimidating space to enter, but the hardest part is usually just starting and following through.” 

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