UTulsa announces two 2025 Goldwater Scholars

TULSA, Okla., April 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- University of Tulsa juniors Kinlie Gililland (biochemistry) of Fort Worth, Texas, and Cameron Walker (physics and math) of Tulsa have received 2025 Barry Goldwater Scholarships.

This prestigious award recognizes exceptional undergraduates pursuing degrees in science, engineering, and/or mathematics disciplines. Only 441 Goldwater Scholarships were awarded for the 2025-26 academic year.

"It is remarkable that a small, private university like UTulsa should produce two Goldwater Scholars in the same year," said President Brad Carson. "This year, The University of Tulsa had more Goldwater Scholars than Rice, Southern Methodist University, and Texas Christian University combined. It's little wonder UTulsa is home to more National Merit scholars per capita than any university in the nation."

Gililland conducts research in three labs – two on campus and one at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. One of her on-campus projects involves identifying inhibitors of cancer cell metabolism, while the other seeks to determine the transcriptomic response to embryonic zebrafish development under hydrostatic pressure.

"The Goldwater justifies my time being spent on the thing that I love most at UTulsa: research! This recognition of the work that I have completed has inspired me to chase the next big opportunities, to say yes to the things that excite me, and to pursue my passions every way I can. I cannot wait to see what comes next," she said.

Gililland intends to pursue a doctorate in neuropharmacology, specializing in translational addiction neuroscience. "I plan to use multidisciplinary neuroscience to develop therapeutic interventions for substance use disorders," she said.

Walker is a member of the Tulsa Undergraduate Research Challenge and is working on two challenging projects. The first involves numerical work on Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). Walker is using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, which is a model equation for the ground-state single-particle wavefunction in a BEC.

Walker's second project combines scientific/mechanistic modeling and novel experimental data with machine learning into a science-guided machine learning approach for solar system biosignature detection and for modeling ocean world geochemistry in the presence and absence of microbial life.

"This honor contextualizes that I am doing well in my academics and am going down the right path," said Walker, a first-generation college student, works as a physics tutor on campus and shoots video for the football team. He plans to pursue a doctorate and conduct research in the astrophysics or astrochemistry field.

SOURCE The University of Tulsa