Four Stanford undergraduates have been awarded the 2026 Barry Goldwater Scholarship.

This year’s recipients are Jonathan Crawford, Steven Liu, Milan Rohatgi, and Teresa Zhang. The award winners are among 454 Goldwater Scholars selected from over 5,000 nominees across 482 institutions. Stanford has had a total of 117 Goldwater Scholars since the first scholarship was awarded in 1989.

The awards support students in natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics, with many recipients planning to pursue PhD degrees. Each Goldwater Scholar receives up to $7,500 per year. Students who receive the award as sophomores receive support for up to two years; students who receive the award as juniors receive support for up to one year.

Here’s what this year’s awardees say fuels their passion for their areas of study.

Jonathan Crawford, Class of 2027
Majors: Electrical Engineering and Physics
Hometown: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Future goals: A PhD in electrical engineering and a research career developing methodologies to investigate neural mechanisms and build neuromorphic computing systems.

“My passion for science started with building Brio trains and Lego, evolved into elaborate basement projects, and has since grown into a framework for how I approach and try to understand the world. What fuels my passion for science is curiosity and self-discovery, and the belief that the two are inseparable. The more I try to understand the world, the more I am pushed to examine how I think, what I assume, and who I am.”

Steven Liu, Class of 2027
Major: Chemical Engineering
Hometown: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Future goals: A PhD in chemical engineering and a career conducting high-impact renewable energy research and mentoring students to be innovative.

“Science, to me, is a form of art. Whether I was growing algae in a closet in high school or studying lithium dendrites at Stanford, I have always been drawn to contradictions in the data and the chance to understand what they reveal. I love that my research lets me connect nanoscale mechanisms to planet-scale climate challenges. I am motivated by the possibility that fundamental research can eventually help build cleaner and more resilient energy systems.”

Milan Rohatgi, Class of 2027
Majors: Physics and Computer Science
Hometown: Palo Alto, California
Future goals: A PhD in computer science and building domain-guided machine learning models that encode scientific knowledge and principles to reason about real-world systems.

“I am excited about building computational systems inspired by the natural sciences that help us better explain the world around us. I hope this kind of work can deepen our understanding of complex systems and open the door to discoveries that improve people’s lives.”

Teresa Zhang, Class of 2027
Majors: Mathematics and Computer Science
Hometown: Loudonville, New York
Future goals: A PhD in computer science and a research career at the intersection of algorithms and hardware to enable scalable, energy-efficient AI.

“What fuels my passion for engineering and mathematics is the possibility of doing meaningful research: asking questions that do not yet have answers, learning through the process, and working on problems that might eventually make a real difference.”