UCLA Samueli Students Earn 2025 Goldwater Scholarship

Third-year bioengineering student Amelia Rodolf and second-year computer science student Edward Sun from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering have earned the Goldwater Scholarship, a nationally competitive award that honors undergraduate students who show exceptional promise as researchers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. 

The pair joined a cohort of 441 scholarship recipients selected by the federally endowed Goldwater Foundation from more than 5,000 applicants in their second or third year of college. Rodolf and Sun are among four UCLA students who earned the scholarship in 2025.

Rodolf intends to research the molecular mechanisms behind disease transmission, particularly in children. She currently investigates latent tuberculosis in the lab of assistant bioengineering professor Mireille Kamariza and co-leads the Cell Team in the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) at UCLA. In 2023, Rodolf earned an Outstanding Poster Presentation Award at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists in honor of her work on dormancy in mycobacteria, which may explain why some tuberculosis cases are symptomatic and infectious while others are not. Next year, Rodolf anticipates helping lead BMES as Technical Vice President while continuing her research. After graduation, she plans to pursue a dual M.D./Ph.D. degree specializing in pediatric infectious diseases, including biological and social influences on disease transmission.

Sun has researched multi-modal large language models (LLMs) for proteins and RNA at the Scalable Analytics Institute and is currently exploring robot policy learning at the UCLA Robot Intelligence Lab. Mentored by Wei Wang — the Leonard Kleinrock Endowed Chair in Computer Science and chair of the department — and computer science assistant professor Yuchen Cui, his work focuses on enhancing the efficiency and scope of LLM applications in scientific research and improving how robots perceive and interact with the world. Through these efforts, Sun aims to enable scientists to tackle deeper, more complex questions with greater confidence. Sun also leads the software team for Bruin Underwater Robotics, a project affiliated with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers at UCLA. After completing his undergraduate studies, Sun plans to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science with a focus on deep learning applications. 

Goldwater Scholarships are awarded by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, which was established by Congress in 1986 as a tribute to the late U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, who represented Arizona for 30 years.