CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — University of Illinois juniors David Balut, Alyssa Shih, Dmitriy Shvydkoy and Annie Zeng were awarded Barry M. Goldwater scholarships for their potential to contribute to the advancement of research in the natural sciences, mathematics or engineering.
As the result of an ongoing partnership with UWorld, a testing tools provider, and the Department of Defense National Defense Education Programs, 441 Barry M. Goldwater scholarships were awarded for the 2025-26 academic year. The four Illinois students were chosen from 1,350 science, engineering and mathematics students that were nominated by 445 academic institutions for the scholarships.
The scholarship program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater is the preeminent undergraduate award of its type in these fields,
The University of Illinois is a perennial leader in the number of Goldwater Scholars awarded. “With nine awardees over the past two years,The University of Illinois joins Columbia University, Dartmouth College, University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University as one of the top producers of Goldwater Scholars in this biennium,” said David Schug, the director of the National and International Scholarships Program.
David Balut plans to pursue a doctorate in physics, bridging experimental and theoretical approaches in condensed matter physics research with a focus on the strange metal problem. Balut is from Arlington Heights, Ill., where he attended John Hersey High School. He works with physics professor Peter Abbamonte’s research group at Illinois, and there the idea that the physics of black holes could emerge in materials inspired his passion for physics research. He led a project studying how inelastic scattering could measure entanglement in materials, which involved collaborating with physics professors Barry Bradlyn and Philip Phillips. He also spent time at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, measuring altermagnetic-lattice modes for the first time in a material.
Alyssa Shih plans to pursue her doctorate in atmospheric sciences with research in mesoscale meteorology and climate applications to advance forecasting and weather communication. She attended Walter Payton College Preparatory High School in Chicago. At Illinois, she has conducted a research project examining 20 years of global storm systems, known as mesoscale convective systems, under the guidance of climate, meteorology and atmospheric sciences professor Steve Nesbitt. She participated in the Northeast Partnership for Atmospheric and Related Sciences Research Experience for Undergraduates through the National Science Foundation. She was also a William M. Lapenta intern for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, examining how a satellite-based quantitative precipitation estimation could aid short-term lake effect snow forecasting in radar blind spots in the Great Lakes region.
Dmitriy Shvydkoy would like to pursue a doctorate in mathematics, with a focus on number theory. He participated in a Research Experience for Undergraduates at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science at Rutgers University and was an intern at Argonne National Laboratory as part of a national undergraduate program. Under the guidance of mathematics professor Florian Zeiser, he worked at the Illinois Mathematics Lab, studying the geometry of linear Poisson brackets. He attended Hinsdale Central High School in Illinois.
A native of San Diego, Annie Zeng, is interested in pursuing a doctorate in either mathematics or computer science. She plans to conduct research in combinatorics and theoretical computer science. She worked with mathematics postdoctoral researcher Peter Bradshaw at the Illinois Combinatorics Lab for Undergraduate Experiences. Computer science professor Ruta Mehta directed her research in theoretical computer science as an Illinois Computer Science Student Ambassador and Research Scholar, and Zeng continues in both programs under the guidance of computer science professor Chandra Chekuri and mathematics professor Abhishek Methuku studying graph theory. Like, Shvydkoy, she participated in the DIMACS REU at Rutgers University, where she studied algorithmic game theory.
