MIT students Ben Lou, Srinath Mahankali, and Kenta Suzuki have been awarded Barry Goldwater Scholarships for the 2024-25 academic year. They are among just 438 beneficiaries from throughout the country chosen based on academic merit from an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, with approximately 1,350 of them nominated by their academic institution to compete for the prize.
Since 1989, the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation has awarded nearly 11,000 Goldwater scholarships to undergraduates who want to pursue research careers in natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering and have the potential to be leaders in their fields. Previous scholars have gone on to achieve an astonishing number of prominent postgraduate fellowships. Almost all, including the three MIT honorees, plan to pursue doctorates in their fields of study.
Ben Lou
Ben Lou, a third-year student originally from San Diego, California, studies physics and math with a minor in philosophy.
“My research interests are scattered across different disciplines,” Lou said. “I want to draw from a wide range of topics in math and physics, finding novel connections between them, to push forward the frontier of knowledge.”
Since January 2022, he has collaborated with Nergis Mavalvala, the dean of the School of Science, and Hudson Loughlin, a graduate student in the LIGO group, which studies gravitational wave detection. Lou collaborates with them to develop quantum measurement research and gain a deeper understanding of quantum gravity.
“Ben has enormous intellectual horsepower and works with remarkable independence,” writes Mavalvala in her recommendation letter. “I have no doubt he has an outstanding career in physics ahead of him.”
Lou, for his part, is grateful to Mavalvala and Loughlin, as well as all of his scientific mentors who have guided him through his research career. This includes MIT professors Alan Guth and Barton Zwiebach, who introduced him to quantum physics, as well as his first-year advisor, Richard Price; current advisor, Janet Conrad; Elijah Bodish and Roman Bezrukavnikov from the Department of Mathematics; and David W. Brown from the San Diego Math Circle.
Lou’s future job aspirations include becoming a theoretical physics professor and studying the “fundamental aspects of reality” while also inspiring youngsters to love math and physics.
In addition to his studies, Lou is presently the vice president of MIT’s Assistive Technology Club and is actively involved in fundraising for Spinal Muscular Atrophy research. In the future, he hopes to continue his philanthropic efforts and use his personal experience to advise an assistive technology startup.
Srinath Mahankali
Srinath Mahankali, a third-year student from New York City, studies computer science.
Mahankali is an undergraduate researcher at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, having started in June 2022. Mahankali’s research focuses on robot training, and she collaborates with Pulkit Agrawal, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and the head of the Improbable AI Lab. His current research focuses on training quadruped robots to walk efficiently and agents to interact in situations with limited feedback. But in the future, he wants to create robots that can perform physical tasks such as gymnastics.
“The experience of discussing research with Srinath is similar to discussions with the best PhD students in my group,” adds Agrawal in his recommendation letter. “He is fearless, willing to take risks, persistent, creative, and gets things done.”
Prior to attending MIT, Mahanakli was a 2021 Regeneron STS scholar, one of the oldest and most distinguished scholarships for math and science students. In 2020, he also took part in the MIT PRIMES program, where he studied objective functions in optimization problems alongside Yunan Yang, an assistant professor of mathematics at Cornell University.
“I’m deeply grateful to all my research advisors for their invaluable mentorship and guidance,” adds Mahanakli, who also thanks PhD students Zhang-Wei Hong and Gabe Margolis, as well as Brandeis assistant professor of math, Promit Ghosal, and all of the PRIMES program organizers. “I’m also very grateful to all the members of the Improbable AI Lab for their support, encouragement, and willingness to help and discuss any questions I have,”
Mahankali intends to pursue a PhD and eventually manage his own robots and artificial intelligence lab.
Kenta Suzuki
Kenta Suzuki is a third-year math major from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Tokyo, Japan.
Suzuki is currently working with mathematics professor Roman Bezrukavnikov on research at the confluence of number and representation theory, using geometric approaches to represent p-adic groups. Suzuki has previously collaborated with math academics Wei Zhang and Zhiwei Yun, with the latter prompting him to continue research in representation theory.
In his recommendation letter, Yun says, “Kenta is the best undergraduate student that I have worked with in terms of raw talent, mathematical maturity, and research skills.”
Suzuki was a Yau Science Award USA finalist in 2020, earning a gold in math, and an honorable mention from the Davidson Institute Fellows program in 2021. He also took part in the MIT PRIMES program in 2020. Suzuki credits his PRIMES mentor, Michael Zieve of the University of Michigan, with giving him his first taste of math research. In addition, he thanked all of his math mentors, including the organizers of the MIT Summer Program in Undergraduate Research.
Suzuki plans to pursue a PhD in pure mathematics after graduating from MIT, continuing his research in representation theory and number theory, and eventually teaching at a research university.
The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was created by the United States Congress in 1986 to honor Senator Barry Goldwater, a soldier and national leader who served the country for 56 years. Awardees get annual scholarships of up to $7,500 to help cover tuition, housing & board, fees, and books.
