Oliver Nizet, a chemical and biomolecular engineering student at Johns Hopkins University, is one of four Hopkins recipients named among 454 Goldwater Scholars—one of the oldest and most prestigious national scholarships in the United States—for the 2026-2027 academic year.
Awardees were 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. Sophomore recipients receive a second year of funding.
Established by Congress in 1986 to honor the legacy of soldier and statesman Barry Goldwater, it is 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, Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation, and many other prestigious awards.
Oliver Nizet (Class of 2027, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Computer Science) 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. He has one publication and has submitted a second manuscript for review in a scholarly journal. At JHU, 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 has been 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.