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TEWKSBURY The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education foundation provides scholarships to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. This nationally prestigious award was bestowed upon two women with Tewksbury roots this year: Cora Barrett and Carolyn Curley.

Barrett, a 2019 graduate of Northfield Mount Hermon School in Gill, Massachusetts is a Tewksbury resident. Barrett is a junior at Wellesley College, double majoring in Physics and Mathematics while also a member of the crew team.

Curley, 2019 graduate of Tewksbury Memorial High School, is a junior at the University of New England in Maine. Curley is a biochemistry major and is a forward on the UNE hockey team.

Barret is also a womens hockey player and she and Curley played together briefly in Tewksbury when they were younger. Curley is involved in research to develop novel antibiotic compounds to combat drug resistant bacterial infections. Barrett is involved investigating how to improve the calibration speed for quantum computers and building exponentially more powerful computers.

Barrets current research is the Engineering Quantum Systems Group at MIT investigating how to use quantum effects like superposition and entanglement to build faster computers. Barrett loves the weirdness of quantum mechanics and studies physics to gain an understanding for how the universe functions on the smallest scale.

Curley is working on the discovery of novel, safe and effective drug candidates to treat drug resistant bacteria by examining polyphenols in algae and creating synthetic approaches to assess toxicity and efficacy.

I am excited about the medicinal chemistry research because it is multi-disciplinary, occurring at the interface of chemistry and the biological sciences with potential applications to medicine, said Curley.

Both women are involved in additional pursuits at their universities and have been recognized for their efforts as pertains to their research. Barrett and Curley have authored papers, presented at symposia and conferences, and are members of associations and societies representing their respective fields.

The Goldwater award was created to encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, or engineering and to foster excellence in those fields.

This year, the foundation awarded 417 students with scholarships out of an estimated pool of over 5,000 college sophomores and juniors from 433 academic institutions.

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Tewksbury alums win Goldwater Award | News | homenewshere.com - Woburn Daily Times