USC Dornsife junior earns a coveted Goldwater Scholarship
Bryson Choy, a junior at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a scholarship from the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation.
Choy, who hails from Honolulu, Hawaii, was chosen from a pool of over 5,000 students from 438 academic institutions. He is currently working towards a bachelor’s degree in quantitative biology and a progressive master’s degree in quantitative and computational biology.
“Many unanswered questions in the life sciences can be viewed through an interdisciplinary lens informed by computer science and mathematics, and I’m excited by the prospect of using my background in quantitative biology to tackle such outstanding questions,” he said.
Bryson Choy hopes to carry forward the guidance his mentors provided.
Choy plans to use the Goldwater Scholarship to apply the computational techniques he learns at USC Dornsife to advance knowledge of human health. In particular, he’ll focus on how the shape of certain proteins and biological molecules contributes to their role in disease and how they might be targeted with therapies.
“My future research will place an emphasis on elucidating the structure-function of clinically relevant proteins and biological macromolecules, as well as the development of novel computational tools for accelerating structure-based drug discovery,” Choy says.
Choy says he is grateful to his many mentors and professors for their guidance, including USC Dornsife’s Vsevolod Katritch, Remo Rohs and Michael Waterman; Bill Padula of the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics; and Dana-Lynn Ko‘omoa-Lange of the University of Hawaii Cancer Center. He hopes to pay the favor forward by mentoring students and young researchers in the future.
“My mentors have all played an instrumental role in supporting my growth as a researcher, and I’m deeply grateful for their mentorship and guidance,” Choy said.
Advising future Goldwater Scholarship applicants, he recommends they showcase their passion for their particular field in their application, emphasize their research experience and seek feedback from faculty and colleagues.
“Each of your writing components should highlight a different aspect of yourself that would make you a successful research scientist,” he says.
During his last year at USC, Choy plans to use the funds from the Goldwater Scholarship to focus on research projects at the USC Bridge Institute at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience and at the USC Schaeffer Center, as well as his senior thesis in computational structural biology.
“The scholarship has not only provided me with monetary support, but it has also connected me to a community of like-minded researchers who share similar career goals and interests,” he said.
About the scholarship
The U.S. Congress established the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation in 1986 as a living memorial to Sen. Barry Goldwater just prior to his retirement from the U.S. Senate.
Goldwater Scholars receive assistance with their application from experts at USC Academic Honors and Fellowships. The office helps USC students earn competitive fellowships and other prestigious honors, providing advice, essay reviews and mock interviews to help them prepare for national competitions.