RIT student Quinn Kolt named 2021 recipient of prestigious Goldwater Scholarship
Applied mathematics student becomes RIT’s 30th Goldwater Scholar since 2005
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Rochester Institute of Technology student Quinn Kolt has been awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the premier undergraduate research scholarship in the fields of math, natural sciences, and engineering in the United States.
The fourth-year applied mathematics and computer science double major from Solon, Ohio, was selected as one of 410 scholars from a pool of 1,256 nominees by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, in partnership with the Department of Defense National Defense Education Programs. Since 2005, RIT has had 30 Goldwater Scholars and seven honorable mentions.
The award is based on academic merit and research experience, and virtually all intend to obtain a Ph.D. as their highest degree. Kolt has worked on a variety of mathematical research, including projects on an upper bound for a cyclic sum of probabilities with mentor Professor James Marengo, methods for stochastic inverse problems with mentor Professor Akhtar Khan, direct methods for the time-harmonic viscoelastic scalar wave inverse problem with mentor Assistant Professor Olalekan Babaniyi, and Legendre transformations with mentor Professor Emeritus David Farnsworth.
Khan introduced Kolt to a wide variety of topics related to his work in theoretical and applied inverse problems and variational inequalities, and Kolt decided to work on stochastic inverse problems. Kolt struggled with the complex, abstract material at first, but eventually gained traction and was exhilarated by the theoretical and computational details.
Kolt’s other accolades include being named the John Wiley Jones Outstanding Student in Science, an RIT Outstanding Undergraduate Scholar, a member of the RIT Honors Program, and receiving a School of Mathematical Sciences Outstanding Service Award.
Kolt’s long-term plans include obtaining a Ph.D. in mathematics, performing research in operator algebras and inverse problems, giving lectures, and providing academic support to students as a professor at the university level.
