To anyone who doesn't believe in themselves, those age-old clichés telling you to follow your dreams and believe in yourself are the truest words ever spoken. If you have a passion, chase it endlessly, and believe that you are good enough to be great, and great enough to be amazing, and you'll be surprised how far you'll go!
Texas A&M University junior biology major Joseph Chen ’23 has been named a 2022 Goldwater Scholar by the Goldwater Scholarship Foundation in recognition of outstanding academic achievement and research potential.
Chen and Texas A&M senior psychology major Maria Ibarra Noriega ’23 earned selection by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation for the nation’s most prestigious award presented to undergraduates who intend to pursue research careers in mathematics, natural sciences or engineering. Each award provides up to $7,500 per year to help students cover costs associated with tuition, fees, books, and room and board.
Chen and Ibarra Noriega are among 417 recipients — including 24 from the state of Texas — selected this year from an estimated pool of more than 5,000 applicants across the country. A total of 54 Texas A&M students have achieved the coveted honor since the program issued its first award in 1989, including 20 from the College of Science. To date, the Goldwater Scholarship Foundation has bestowed more than $40 million in scholarships.
Chen, a native of Houston, is pursuing a minor in computer science along with his major in biology. Since December 2019, he has been a member of Dr. Jennifer Dulin’s laboratory in the Texas A&M Department of Biology, where he also has been mentored by postdoctoral researcher Dr. Miriam Aceves, a 2011 psychology and 2017 Ph.D. neuroscience graduate of Texas A&M. Chen’s current research project focuses on studying neural progenitor cells and how isolating them at different embryonic time points can assist in connectivity and functional recovery for spinal cord injuries. He has presented his research, “Effects of Developmental Restriction on Neural Progenitor Cell Differentiation In Vitro” on three separate occasions at Texas A&M: the Texas A&M Students for Neuroscience Winter Symposium (Dec 2020), Student Research Week (March 2021) and the College of Medicine Graduate Student Organization Research Symposium (April 2021).
“Joseph is one of the best and brightest of the Texas A&M Biology Undergraduate Program and a shining star in my lab,” said Dulin ’05, an assistant professor and TIRR Foundation Fellow at Texas A&M since 2017. “Through his ingenuity and coding skills, he has truly changed the playing field for the image analysis that we do very routinely in my lab.
“Joseph conceived of and implemented his project almost totally independently, with minimal input from me, to address an area of significant need in our research. This is the kind of initiative that one hopes to see in high-performing graduate students, but is very rarely seen in undergraduates.”
As an active member of LAUNCH: Undergraduate Research and an Undergraduate Research Ambassador, Chen encourages undergraduates to get involved in research as early as possible. This summer, he plans to explore how neurons are associated by functional groups while working with Drs. Carmen Dessauer and Edgar Walters at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. After graduating from Texas A&M next year, he plans to pursue a Ph.D. in neurology or neurotrauma and an MD specializing in neurosurgery in order to conduct research on clinical neural progenitor cell transplantation and teach at a medical school.
“To anyone who doesn’t believe in themselves, those age-old clichés telling you to follow your dreams and believe in yourself are the truest words ever spoken,” Chen said. “If you have a passion, chase it endlessly, and believe that you are good enough to be great, and great enough to be amazing, and you’ll be surprised how far you’ll go!”
Chen and Ibarra Noriega were nominated for the Goldwater Scholarship along with two additional Texas A&M students — senior biomedical engineering major Anita Sumali ’23 and senior applied mathematics major William Frendreiss ’23 — by a faculty-staff committee organized by LAUNCH: National Fellowships at Texas A&M University.
The Goldwater Foundation was established by Congress in 1986 to serve as a living memorial to honor the lifetime work of Senator Barry Goldwater, who served his country for 56 years as a soldier and statesman, including 30 years in the U.S. Senate.
To read more about how LAUNCH helps prepare outstanding students to compete for nationally competitive awards such as the Goldwater Scholarship with the generous support of the Association of Former Students, visit http://natlfellows.tamu.edu.
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About Research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including in science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M generated annual expenditures of more than $1.13 billion in fiscal year 2020 and ranked 14th in the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development Survey. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world. To learn more, visit Research@Texas A&M.