Three Cornell University undergraduate students have been awarded prestigious 1997 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships for science and mathematics. The students are: Miroslav Shverdinovsky, a junior in the College of Engineering, from Swampscott, Mass.; Howard Moskowitz, a junior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, from Great Neck, N.Y.; and Ilarion "Larry" Melnikov, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, from Evanston, Ill.

The Goldwater Scholarship was established in 1986 in recognition of the long government service of Sen. Barry M. Goldwater and to foster and encourage excellence in science and mathematics. Up to 250 awards are made annually, each scholarship providing a maximum of $7,000 per year for tuition, fees, books and room and board. Sophomore applicants are eligible for two years of support; junior applicants are eligible for one year.

This is the second year in a row that Cornell has had three Goldwater Scholarship recipients. The university has had 10 since 1992, said Jacqueline Soltys, fellowships coordinator at the Cornell Career Center.

Eligible for the scholarships are current sophomores and juniors who have demonstrated outstanding potential for and commitment to a career in mathematics, the natural sciences or some fields of engineering. The students' ultimate educational goal should be the Ph.D.; the competition is not appropriate for students intending to go to medical school or stop their education at the master's level, according to Soltys.

The process for applying for the scholarship lasts about four months. Faculty members -- usually faculty who are not familiar to the student -- critique the students' applications during the process.

Miroslav Shverdinovsky

Shverdinovsky majors in applied and engineering physics in the College of Engineering. He is a member of the Cornell Engineering Physics Society, the Chess Club, the Math Club, and is a member of Tau Beta Pi National Honor Society. He also is a John McMullen Scholar at Cornell and holds scholarships from the Cornell Club of Boston and the Karl Fisher Foundation. He also holds an Undergraduate Fellowship in Plasma Physics and Fusion Engineering.

At Swampscott High School north of Boston, Shverdinovsky was valedictorian, a Pan-American Team Chess Champion and a member of the New England Champion Math Team and the Eastern Massachusetts All-Star Math Team.

He came with his family to the United States 10 years ago from Belarus. His father, a chemical engineer, and mother helped encourage his love of science, he said, which was evident in high school. He credits them, as well as his academic adviser at Cornell, John Silcox, the David E. Burr Professor of Engineering and director of the Materials Science Center, with fostering his scientific prowess. He also gives credit to Hans Fleischmann, professor of applied and engineering physics.

"I've had really great professors here at Cornell," Shverdinovsky said. "I really enjoy my studies here."

At Cornell, he is a research assistant in electron microscopy at the Wilson Laboratory Synchrotron, an undergraduate fellow in plasma physics and he has done research at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab and the University of California at Berkeley. He presented results of research on numerical simulations of plasma behavior at the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics Annual Conference.

"The idea is that current energy sources, fossil fuels, will run out and we are trying to come out with efficient alternative energy sources. One possibility is to use plasma for nuclear fusion," Shverdinovsky said. "The behavior of plasma is very complicated and cannot be solved by analytical means. You need numerical codes to simulate the behavior."

Howard Moskowitz

Moskowitz, a junior from Great Neck, N.Y., became fascinated with science -- and more specifically biology -- long before he came to Cornell. "My interest in science started very early," he said. "For an elementary school science project, I worked on the genetics of fruit flies. The science of it just grabbed me. That's why I applied to Cornell as a biology major," he said. In high school he worked on a project that focused on recombinant DNA and on a Westinghouse Science Talent Search project on heats of evaporation.

Moskowitz performs research in neurobiology and behavior and, following graduation next year, expects to pursue a combined M.D.-Ph.D program in neurobiology, and he one day hopes to have his own laboratory.

Prior to coming to Cornell, he was the senior class salutatorian at Great Neck South High School as well as a National Merit Scholarship Finalist. He received the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Mathematics and Science Award and a Harvard Book Award.

Ilarion "Larry" Melnikov

In between Cornell semesters, Moskowitz spent a summer at the New York University Medical Center Summer Undergraduate Research Program/Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine.

"In labs, you never know what results you will receive. That's what makes science so exciting," he said. "You do an interpretation of the results in light of what you know. This is an opportunity to take an active role and I'm just trying to take advantage of this opportunity."

In addition to his research , Moskowitz also has been a doctor-patient aid at the North Shore University Hospital in Manhassett, N.Y.

At Cornell, Moskowitz earned the Alpha Zeta Scholarship Key, which is awarded to the freshmen in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences with the highest grade point average. He also has earned the Golden Key National Honor Society Award.

Melnikov, a dean's list student, studies physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. He does research with Eberhard Bodenschatz, assistant professor of physics, and David Egolf, research associate at the Cornell Theory Center, and has presented his research on "Quantifying Spatiotemporal Chaos" at the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting.

Melnikov's current interest is in non-equilibrium pattern formation and research on the physical models found in nature. "I find physics a very beautiful science; it's like painting," he said. "Things are simple and they make sense."

While at the Evanston Township High School, Evanston, Ill., Melnikov was a computer system administrator and a member of the math club.

He also participated in a Summer Undergraduate Research Program sponsored by the Materials Science Center at Cornell and produced a computer simulation in molecular dynamics while in high school which resulted in a Westinghouse Science talent paper, and he was a national high school SuperQuest winner (for scientific research using a supercomputer).