Alex G. Anderson of Wilmette receives Goldwater Scholarship

ST. LOUIS, MO (05/03/2011)(readMedia)-- Alex Anderson, son of Diane and James Anderson of Wilmette, Ill. (60091), recently received the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for the 2011-12 academic year.

Anderson is among two Washington University in St. Louis students to receive the prestigious national scholarship, with a third receiving an honorable mention.

Winners of the Goldwater Scholarship are Arts & Sciences juniors Anderson, a mathematics and physics major, and Suchita Rastogi, a biology major on the molecular biology and biochemistry track.

Martin Y. Fan, a junior chemistry major, received an honorable mention in the Goldwater competition.

"I believe the success of our students in winning these extremely competitive national awards is really grounded in the excellent faculty mentoring each of these students has received from very early on in their undergraduate careers," says Joy Z. Kiefer, PhD, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and associate director of the Office of Undergraduate Research.

"This in-depth faculty mentoring is a hallmark of the undergraduate experience here at Washington University, and I am very happy to have us represented so well on the national stage," says Kiefer, the campus fellowship adviser for current students and recent alumni interested in competitive fellowship and scholarship programs.

The Goldwater Scholarship is considered one of the most prestigious awards for undergraduates planning careers in the sciences, engineering or math. It covers as much as $7,500 annually toward tuition, fees and books in their junior or senior year.

The U.S. Congress established the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation in 1986 to honor Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, who served in the U.S. Senate for 30 years.

The Goldwater Foundation, a federally endowed agency, awarded 275 scholarships for the 2011-2012 academic year, selecting recipients on the basis of academic merit from a pool of 1,095 undergraduate sophomores and juniors nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide.

Anderson

Anderson plans to pursue a doctoral degree and a career in physics research within an academic institution. A recent area of research with Carl Bender, PhD, the Wilfred R. and Ann Lee Konneker Distinguished Professor of Physics in Arts & Sciences, focused on the extension of classical mechanics into the complex domain. They co-authored a paper together that is under review.

Anderson's current research area concerns asymptotic methods and perturbation theory, based on Bender's book Advanced Mathematical Methods for Scientists and Engineers.

He was in the Department of Biology's inaugural Phage Hunters class (Bio 191/192) in 2008, a yearlong research course for freshmen in which they isolate and characterize novel phages - viruses that infect bacteria. He and 12 others in that class were co-authors of a journal article on their research.

Anderson, an Arthur Holly Compton Fellowship recipient and a Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity member, has been an academic mentor in physics, calculus and math at Cornerstone: The Center for Advanced Learning. Last summer, he was the primary instructor for an advanced geometry class at the AwesomeMath Summer Program.

As a member of the Putnam Math Club, Anderson was part of a three-member team in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition this academic year that placed 19th out of 442 teams from 546 colleges and universities. Individual performances also are ranked, and Anderson earned an honorable mention with a rank of 56.5. His three-member team in the annual Missouri Collegiate Mathematics Competition took third place this year and first place last year.

In 2008, Anderson won a Robert N. Varney Prize, awarded to the best student or students in the Washington University introductory physics course.