Beginning in 2012, the Chapter began awarding scholarships to Georgetown undergraduates, a move which further highlighted the central place of science in a liberal arts education. A steadfast partner to Georgetown, the Metropolitan Washington Chapter was inducted into the 1789 Society in 2015 for having exceeded $1 million in philanthropic giving to the university. The Chapter was formally recognized with an award and citation at the Spring Faculty Convocation Ceremony on March 31, 2015.
2025-26 Awards
2025-26 ARCS Endowed Scholar Awards
The Metropolitan Washington Chapter of the ARCS Foundation has notified the Graduate School that it will once again support graduate education and research with two ARCS Endowment Scholar Awards for the 2025-26 academic year, each valued at $15,000. The call for nominations for the separate 2025-26 ARCS Chapter Awards is then expected in February.
Georgetown University is eligible to nominate two students for the Endowment Scholar Awards, and this year ARCS has requested nominations from one graduate student in the field of Chemistry and one graduate student in the field of Mechanical Engineering.
Funds may be applied toward stipend, tuition or research costs during the academic year of award. A listing of our current and past graduate fellows is provided below.
Nominee Eligibility
U.S. Citizenship
Full-time enrollment in an approved doctoral program
GPA of 3.5 or above
Completing dissertation research in mechanical engineering or chemistry
Each program may nominate up to two students per field (engineering and chemistry).
Applicants are selected without regard to race, gender or religion.
To Apply
Students should apply to their graduate programs. Ph.D. programs in Chemistry and Physics may nominate up to two students per field to the University Office of Graduate Studies for consideration.
The nomination packet requires the following items, collated as one PDF:
From the student:
A completed scholar application, including a statement of no more than two pages, single-spaced, describing their research and articulating how the funding would be beneficial to their progress;
An unofficial copy of their transcript;
A current CV
From the program:
Two letters of recommendation, one from the mentor and a second from either the Chair or the Director of Graduate Studies**
**Please include in each letter both an assessment of the student’s academic work to date and a brief description of his or her research and its significance. Letters should be printed on university letterhead and addressed to the Vice President for Graduate Studies.
Submission and Review
Nominations should be collated as one complete PDF and submitted to Elizabeth George (erg51@georgetown.edu) no later than 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 12, 2024.
Nominations must be submitted by the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) or designated program staff.
The Graduate Research Steering Committee will select three institutional nominees to ARCS.
Guidelines on Proposed Use of ARCS funds
ARCS would prefer that funds be used to directly further the student’s research, such as funds to cover or defray purchase or use of specialized lab equipment and materials unique to their research or travel for field research (but not for a scientific meeting that the student would have attended anyway).
The important thing to remember is that when ARCS asks a nominee to explain how their support will advance the student’s research, they want to hear about specific, tangible uses — things that the student will be able to do that otherwise would be difficult or impossible without their support. Some of the funds may still be allocated toward the student’s stipend support; but wherever possible, we recommend that a portion be targeted for direct research support. Identifying these differential uses for the $15,000 will require that the nomination include a simple budget.
2026 Scholars
Hannah Snyder
Program: Biology Mentor: Tiffany Zarella
Nicholas Lutz
Program: Chemistry Mentor: Travis Holman
Douglas Kung
Program: Tumor Biology Mentor: Sreejeth Nair
Samuel Allsup (Endowment Scholar)
Program: Biochemistry and Molecular & Cellular Biology Mentor: Cecil Han
Katelyn Dial, Ph.D. candidate in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Dissertation Research: Investigating how psychedelics work at a specific brain receptor called the serotonin 2A receptor to rapidly reverse the symptoms of depression; activating this receptor changes structures called perineuronal nets, which normally restrict the brain’s ability to adapt and heal. By studying how psychedelics remodel these structures, this research aims to uncover new ways to make the brain more flexible and resilient, leading to faster and more lasting treatments for depression.
Dissertation Research: Designing and engineering a flexible skin patch capable of delivering drugs transdermally. Using standard integrated circuit microfabrication techniques, the patch will allow for the delivery of drugs through the microchannels in the topmost layer of the skin and directly into the body in a painless and non-intrusive manner.
Charli Minsavage-Davis, Ph.D. candidate in Biology
Dissertation Research: Using artificial intelligence (AI) with novel mechanistic models to sequence genome-scale DNA data from the critically understudied salt marsh foundation species, Spartina patens. This novel approach will forward our understanding of the impacts of asexual reproduction on genetic population structure and evolution in macro-organisms.
Alexander Lekan, M.D./Ph.D. candidate in Tumor Biology
Dissertation Research: Identifying treatment strategies to increase immune cell accumulation in pancreatic cancer in order to improve patient responses to immunotherapy. Specifically, utilizing high throughput spatial imaging technologies to identify the impact of increasing immune cell-tumor cell interactions on promoting anti-tumor effects in pancreatic cancer.
Dissertation Research: Fabricating graphene devices in the form of quantum dot bolometers for use as a measurement platform for studying single-molecule magnets. These devices show promise for quantum computing, magnetic storage, and allow for the study of smaller samples of molecular magnets than conventional methods.
Dissertation Research: Understanding memory systems, pasticularty the active, biological process of forgetting is a core area of research that can lead to cutting-edge treatments for neurobiological disorders. Using Drosophila, this research will examine is labile memories vulnerable to degradation by different insults, such as anesthesia, is a process mediated by dopaminergic signaling.
Dissertation Research: Identifying treatment strategies to increase immune cell accumulation in pancreatic cancer in order to improve patient responses to immunotherapy. Specifically, utilizing high throughput spatial imaging technologies to identify the impact of increasing immune cell-tumor cell interactions on promoting anti-tumor effects in pancreatic cancer.
Dissertation Research: Investigating novel mechanisms of enhancing immune cell invasion into tumors by overexpressing proteases responsible for the digestion of extracellular matrix. This is done with the goal of improving existing cellular therapies in solid tumors, like pancreatic cancer.
Dissertation Research: Bottlenose dolphins foraging with sponge tools in Shark Bay, Western Australia represent the best documented case of tool use in a wild cetacean, but precise mechanisms of the technique are not known. This research investigates whether dolphins modify echolocation use while sponging compared to similar foraging methods without sponge tools by combining behavioral, acoustic, and sound propagation modeling techniques.
Dissertation Research: Investigating mechanisms of immune cell interactions in pancreatic cancer by utilizing high-throughput spatial technologies. This approach will provide insights on immune cell localization and identify new therapeutic targets to promote anti-tumor immune responses and immunotherapy efficacy in pancreatic cancer.
Dissertation Research: Understanding the “road map” by which seizures spread in the brain. Using high spatial and temporal resolution methods to record, target and manipulate neuronal activity within defined regions of the brain to influence seizure initiation, propagation and cessation.
Dissertation Research: Investigating pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancers in the world, by combining apelin endothelial signaling pathway, pancreas-on-a-chip technology, and extracellular vesicles — three important and relatively new areas of research — in hopes to bring better intervention and detection methods to clinical practice.
Dissertation Research: Developing high-sensitivity analytical techniques for quantitative trace fluorine detection in complex environmental and biological samples, to enable quantification of any fluorine-containing molecule without the need for standards specific to that compound; offering a general approach for trace-level quantitative mapping of fluorochemical bio- and environmental transformations.
Dissertation research: Understanding the “road map” by which seizures spread in the brain. Using high spatial and temporal resolution methods to record, target and manipulate neuronal activity within defined regions of the brain to influence seizure initiation, propagation and cessation.
Dissertation Research: Integrating high-throughput and spatial technologies to discover interactions between tumors cells and the microenvironment that promote metastasis. This new discovery approach will illuminate our understanding of tumor evolution and has the potential to identify new drug targets for the treatment of patients with metastatic cancer.
Dissertation Research: The europium chalcogenides (EuO, EuS, EuSe and EuTe) are intrinsic magnetic semiconductors that have highly coupled magnetic, electronic and optical properties. Investigation of this coupling on the nanoscale is key to the integration of exciting properties such as spin filtering and magnetoresistance into the next generation of electronics.
Dissertation Research: Optimizing liquid biopsy technology to trace the origins of cell-free DNA using tissue- and cell-type specific methylation patterns. How to use these advancements to better understand disease and toxicities at a cellular level, specifically to determine the onset and time course of liver damage from reperfusion injury after liver transplant.
Dissertation Research: Utilizing micro-scale fabrication techniques to design and develop novel medical devices for biomarker sensing in non-invasively sampled human interstitial fluid.
Dissertation Research: Using a combination of wet-lab work and bioinformatics to study the survival mechanisms of primitive microbial life in a perennially frozen, methane-rich Antarctic lake, which serves as an analog for the icy moons in the outer reaches of our solar system.
Dissertation Research: Using supramolecular chemistry to investigate binding interactions involving halogens and organometallic synthesis, as well as researching catalysis for the synthesis of pharmaceutically relevant compounds.
Dissertation Research: Using genetic tools to determine the role of non-coding, regulatory RNA, RsaD in Staphylococcus aureas virulence, specifically how RsaD contributes to the development of multicellular communities during infection.
Dissertation Research: Using modern machine-learning techniques to improve information-retrieval systems, including those that answer complex questions; systems that find relevant medical literature to support physicians; and systems that can identify those suffering from mental illnesses, by analyzing social media activity to provide early support.
Dissertation Research: How hypocampal activity, which is critical for memory consolidation, is impaired in Alzheimer’s disease. Investigating the neuronal microcircuitry with the tools of electrophysiology, calcium imaging, and computational modeling.
Dissertation Research: The use of Raman spectroscopy to investigate the fundamental properties of zinc oxide nanorods (ZnO) to better understand now the structure of ZnO nanomaterials influences its physical properties, and to study facet-specific reactivity of the material.
Dissertation Research: The development of novel catalytic systems for the sustainable production of ammonia from abundant dinitrogen as well as electrocatalytic ammonia oxidation systems for efficient fuel cells in energy applications.
Research: Studied liquid crystalline ordering under confinement, using microtubules as a model liquid crystal within microfluidic chambers to provide insight into how liquid crystals order within geometries smaller than their persistence length.
Research: Conducted research in solid state organic chemistry to elucidate the dehydration mechanism(s) of crystalline hydrates, and how doping effects can be used to rationally tailor the physical properties of these materials.
Dissertation Research: The use of a high-throughput genetic screen to study cellular and sub-cellular mechanics of pathogenic yeast to target genes for potent therapeutics.
