Three Yale juniors have received Goldwater Scholarships, a prestigious honor that supports students interested in research careers in the fields of natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics.
Meena Ambati, Camille Chiu, and Karinne Tennenbaum
Meena Ambati, Camille Chiu, and Karinne Tennenbaum
Three Yale juniors — Meena Ambati, Camille Chiu, and Karinne Tennenbaum — are among the 441 U.S. college students awarded Goldwater Scholarships for the 2025-26 academic year (along with another 64 sophomores awarded the scholarship last year, who will receive a second year of support). The scholarships, named for the late U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, encourage students to pursue research careers in the fields of natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics.
The Goldwater Scholarships are supported by the Goldwater Foundation and by an ongoing partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense National Defense Education Program.
The Yale awardees were selected from a pool of more than 5,000 college sophomores and juniors who were nominated by 445 academic institutions. Virtually every scholarship recipient has said that they intend to obtain a Ph.D., and many of have already published research in leading professional journals and presented their work at professional society conferences.
At Yale, Camille Chiu is majoring in astrophysics. Since her first year, she has worked with Marla Geha, professor of astronomy and of physics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, studying the chemical and dynamical properties of the Milky Way ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Willman 1. Last summer, working with astronomer Dan Huber and research scientist Yaguang Li, she investigated how much mass stars lose during the red giant branch phase of stellar evolution, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. This summer she will work at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, exploring the dark Universe with the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. Chiu is the undergraduate coordinator for AstroSibs, a mentorship program between astronomy undergraduate and graduate students; is a board member for the Yale chapter of Women and Gender Minorities in Physics; and writes for Yale Scientific Magazine. After graduation, she hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in astrophysics in so that she can better understand and share the mysteries of the cosmos.
Meenakshi Ambati is majoring in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology with a certificate in Global Health Studies. As a Hahn Scholar, she has performed research in the lab of Ruslan Medzhitov, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology, on the evolution of gut-derived organs and regulation of mast cell degranulation pertaining to food allergy. Her research has also encompassed inflammasome biology, drug repurposing, sex-related differences in cataract progression, and she has recently published a paper on geographic disparities in diabetic retinopathy in India. At Yale, she serves as editor-in-chief of the Yale Undergraduate Research Journal, volunteers at the HAVEN Free Clinic, a student-run primary care clinic, and done research on corporate sustainability.
Karinne Tennenbaum, who is majoring in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB), is also a Yale Engineering and Science (YES) Scholar. She has conducted research in the lab of Liza Comita, the Davis-Denkmann Professor of Tropical Forest Ecology at Yale School of the Environment. Last summer, through the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, she conducted fieldwork on Panama’s Barro Colorado Island evaluating predation pressure of insect herbivores in secondary tropical rainforests. She has also performed scanning electron microscopy analysis of structural colors in the plumage of a rare Venezuelan hummingbird and investigated threats to shorebirds in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve in Puerto Williams, Chile. Before coming to Yale, she helped investigate how lead pollution in Flint affected urban and rural bird populations. Last year, she developed an educational initiative about birding as part of The World Around’s Young Climate Prize, which empowers young climate leaders. She is also president of the Yale Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Undergraduate Group (YEEBUG) and the co-president of the Yale Birding Student Association (YBSA). She is a STEM (Science) Tour Guide and a Yale Peabody Museum Tour Guide. After Yale, she plans to pursue a Ph.D. and an academic career at the intersection of ornithology, tropical forestry, and physiology.
With the latest cohort of award recipients, the Goldwater Foundation has now awarded 11,162 scholarships to students from across the U.S. since it was created in 1989. Many past recipients have gone on to win other prestigious awards like the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Fellowship, Rhodes scholarships, Churchill scholarships, and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship.
