ITHACA, N.Y. -- Four Cornell University undergraduates -- two sophomores and two juniors -- are winners of the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

The students are sophomores Peter M. Clark of Flemington, N.J., majoring in biology, chemistry and mathematics, and Matthew Moake of Cedaredge, Colo., majoring in biology; and juniors Adam Berman of Bethesda, Md., majoring in physics, and Yolanda Tseng of San Jose, Calif., majoring in biological engineering.

Since 1992, 29 Cornell undergraduates have won Goldwater scholarships. This is the seventh year in a row that the university has had three or more Goldwater winners.

The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation was established by act of Congress in 1986 in recognition of the long government service of the late U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater and to foster and encourage excellence in mathematics, science and engineering. The scholarship was designed to encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. It is the premier undergraduate award for students in the sciences. The one- and two-year scholarships cover college expenses up to $7,500 per year.

Clark, a sophomore in the Cornell College of Arts and Sciences and a College Scholar, plans to earn his doctorate in nanotechnology and then teach at the university level. He hopes to apply biology, chemistry and physics to creating nanomachines that may one day help in treating disease. Working this past summer at Rutgers University's Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, Clark helped discover the mechanisms through which glutathione, a chemical found naturally in cells, hinders the development of cardiovascular plaque. He also developed a new procedure to detect the level of specific proteins in macrophages, or leukocytes (white blood cells), determined a section of the biochemical pathway that causes cardiovascular plaque and identified the specific proteins that glutathione interacts with in macrophages. He is currently working in the laboratory of Stephen Lee, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, to try to discover the lowest energy crystalline structure for different dimetals (compounds consisting of a repeated crystal structure that contains only two metal elements).

Clark is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Benson Leister Scholarship for academic excellence in the field of biology, a Carol Clark Tatkon Scholarship for overall academic excellence, the American Cyanamid Excellence in the Study of Science Award, Chubb and Sons Excellence in the Study of Mathematics Award and a Panasonic Creative Design Scholarship.

Moake, a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, expects to take his Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology. He works with Randy Worobo, assistant professor of food science and technology at Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, on characterizing Mattacin, a secondary bacterial metabolite (compounds produced by bacteria via non-essential metabolic pathways), as a potential anti-cancer and anti-viral agent. At the food microbiology laboratory, Moake works on characterizing and identifying the genetic sequence responsible for both the production of and sensitivity to a novel, broad-spectrum antibiotic/bacteriocin (a protein substance released by certain bacteria) discovered in the spring. And at the Laboratory on Immune Biology of Retroviral Infection at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland this past summer, he worked on a project involving the antibody-based mucosal immune responses of macaques immunized with a specialized prime/ boost vaccine regimen. His plans are to complete a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health and then to head his own laboratory to work on disease-treatment research. He plays numerous sports, including tennis and soccer, and has a National Institutes of Health Undergraduate Research Fellowship and a Cornell Tradition Fellowship.

Berman, a junior in Cornell's College of Engineering, is working this semester with Lois Pollack, assistant professor of applied and engineering physics, using nanofabricated flows and X-ray scattering to monitor the size and shape of RNA molecules as they fold in microseconds. Last summer he worked under Mark Saltzman, professor of chemical engineering, crystallizing calcium phosphate on the surface of nanopatterned hydrogels (jellylike materials used for anchoring biological substances, such as skin and vascular tissues) for possible use in speeding the healing of bone.

Berman is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Meinig Family Cornell National Scholarship and a Cornell College of Engineering McMullen Dean's Scholarship, and he is a member of the Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honor Society and the Golden Key International Honor Society. He also is a singer with the Chai Notes a cappella group on campus and a member of the Cornell traveling Ping-Pong team. His plans are to earn a doctorate in biophysics and teach and conduct research at the university level. Tseng, also a junior in the College of Engineering, plans to obtain a medical and doctorate degree and then to apply biological engineering research to clinical problems. Working with Dan Luo, assistant professor of biological and environmental engineering, Tseng helped use agarose gel electrophoresis (the separation of charged molecules, such as DNA, by moving the molecules by electric current through agarose, an extract of seaweed) to create a standard curve, used to determine the concentration of substances. This year she is working on nucleic acid engineering and nanofabrication. In additional to helping Ph.D. candidates run experiments, she is conducting independent cross-disciplinary research between nucleic acid engineering and nanofabrication in order to investigate new techniques that can be used to image DNA structural shapes (building block DNAs) using atomic force microscopy. The hope is that the construction of some basic shapes can lead to the formation of more complex structural molecules (made out of DNA) and that these molecules can be used in nanofabrication, gene therapy and other areas of research. This summer she will work at Harvard Medical School investigating interactions that control protein and lipid mobility and their distribution in cell membranes.

A former webmaster for Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Tseng has worked as a facilitator for the Expanding Youth Horizons workshops at Cornell as well as for the Cornell Reading Initiative. She is the new president of Tau Beta Pi, the National Engineering Honor Society.