Three UW–Madison students named 2025 Goldwater Scholars

Three University of Wisconsin–Madison students have received 2025 Goldwater Scholarships, considered the country’s preeminent undergraduate scholarship in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering.

UW–Madison’s winners are juniors Alissa Choi and Pramana Saldin and sophomore Elliott Weix. Each Goldwater Scholar receives up to $7,500 per academic year for up to two years.

More than 1,300 students were nominated this year by academic institutions; 441 were named Goldwater Scholars.

Each university in the country may nominate up to four undergraduates for the annual award. Historically, UW–Madison has done well, and this year is no exception, says Julie Stubbs, director of UW’s Office of Undergraduate Academic Awards.

“Congratulations to Alissa, Pramana and Elliott for this well-deserved national recognition,” Stubbs says. “These three scholars reflect the strength of undergraduate research on campus and the value the university places on developing the next generation of scientists, mathematicians and engineers through world-class instruction and mentoring.”

UW–Madison’s 2025 Goldwater Scholars:

Alissa Choi of Brooklyn, New York

Choi is a junior majoring in chemistry as well as geology and geophysics. She has conducted research at UW in the Earth Evolution Group and at the National Science Foundation Center for Oldest Ice Exploration where she worked with Austin Carter and Sarah Aarons at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography analyzing dust in nearly 4-million-year-old Antarctic ice, contributing to a manuscript under review at Nature Geoscience. She has also worked with Julia Marks Peterson and Ed Brook and at Oregon State University investigating carbon dioxide and methane measurements in the same ice core. Choi is currently working on a first-author manuscript and this summer will be working in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Monitoring Lab. Additionally, Choi received the Cryosphere Innovation Award to fund an ongoing pilot project looking at ice microstructure with UW geoscientist Chloe Bonamici. Choi is also a Posse Scholar and a 2024-2026 NOAA Ernest F. Hollings Scholar. She plans to pursue a doctorate in geoscience with a focus on low temperature geochemistry and paleoclimate. 

Pramana Saldin of Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Saldin is a junior majoring in mathematics with a certificate in computer sciences. His current research interests are in algebra and geometry. Since freshman year, Saldin has been involved in the Madison Experimental Math Lab (MXM), where faculty, graduate students and undergraduates work together to research mathematics and develop exploratory software. He has worked on MXM projects with Tullia Dymarz and Jordan Ellenberg on geometric group theory and machine learning for mathematics. He has also contributed to a summer research project on Teichmüeller dynamics with Paul Apisa. Saldin has presented his work at the 2024 Joint Mathematics Meeting and is a co-author of a recently published paper in in Geometriae Dedicata. Saldin plans to pursue a doctorate in mathematics.

Elliott Weix of Madison, Wisconsin

Weix is a sophomore majoring in biochemistry and mathematics. As a high school junior, he joined Scott Coyle’s biochemistry lab through the High School Research Internship program. Weix has continued at the lab as an undergraduate, earning co-authorship on a high-profile paper published in the journal Cell in 2024 as well as on two preprinted manuscripts. Recently, Weix’s research led to an original discovery, which he is developing into a model for studying the development of multicellular structures from a single-cell perspective. He plans to pursue a doctorate in computational biology or biochemistry and a career researching epigenetic inheritance mechanisms using mathematical tools and synthetic biology methods.

Congress established the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation in 1986. Goldwater served in the U.S. Senate for over 30 years and challenged Lyndon B. Johnson for the presidency in 1964.