Johns Hopkins University junior Oliver Nizet is among the 454 students awarded Goldwater Scholarships—one of the oldest and most prestigious national scholarships in the United States—for the 2026-2027 academic year.
Nizet, who is double majoring in computer science and chemical and biomedical engineering, was selected from a pool of more than 5,000 college sophomores and juniors demonstrating exceptional promise in the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics. Each Goldwater Scholar receives up to $7,500 toward the cost of tuition, mandatory fees, books, and room and board.
Established by Congress in 1986 to honor the legacy of soldier and statesman Barry Goldwater, it this one of the earliest significant national scholarships focusing on STEM fields. The national prestige afforded through the Goldwater Scholarship has also been known to give students a competitive edge when pursuing graduate fellowships in their fields; many Goldwater Scholars at JHU and beyond go on to receive Rhodes Scholarships, Churchill Scholarships, Marshall Scholarships, Hertz Fellowships, NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, and other prestigious awards.
Nizet plans to pursue a PhD in bioengineering to prepare for a career as a researcher developing engineered therapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases. He began researching as a high school student by volunteering in Rob Knight’s lab at the University of California, San Diego. Nizet has one publication and has submitted a second manuscript for review in a scholarly journal. At Hopkins, Nizet connected with Vice Provost for Research Denis Wirtz to research lethal gynecologic cancer originating from precursor lesions in the fallopian tubes. He contributed to a manuscript that is currently under review for publication, and he is currently researching prostate cancer in Wirtz’s lab. In addition to academics and research, Nizet serves the JHU and Baltimore communities as a peer leader in the Johns Hopkins PILOT Program and as an elementary school tutor with the Johns Hopkins Tutorial Project. He was inducted into the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society in 2025 and has excelled academically at Hopkins.
To learn more about the Goldwater Scholarship and other available fellowships, visit the National Fellowship Program website.