Sebastian Kinzie ’26 will enroll at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom this fall as Pomona College’s latest recipient of the prestigious Churchill Scholarship.
Over the next year, he will conduct independent research as part of a lab in the Churchill College Department of Chemistry developing biophysical tools to answer questions about degenerative diseases.
For Kinzie, a chemistry major, the quest is personal.
“The reason I wanted to go into neurodegenerative disease research initially was because of my grandparents,” who had health issues, he says. “I’m excited to continue on this path in honor of them.”
Kinzie is the fourth student from Professor of Chemistry Malkiat Johal’s lab to win a Churchill Scholarship. A Cambridge alumnus himself, Johal won the Churchill Adviser Award in 2020. The prize honors those who have identified and nominated multiple Churchill Scholars.
The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States selects 16 Churchill Scholars annually to spend a year at Churchill College pursuing a master of philosophy degree in science, mathematics or engineering. The award covers tuition and travel costs and includes a competitive stipend and the opportunity to apply for a special research grant.
Kinzie’s path to the Churchill Scholarship began his first year at Pomona, when he joined the Johal lab and was paired with Mohammed Ahmed ’23 for mentoring. Ahmed—a future Downing Scholar—shared with Kinzie what he was learning about graduate opportunities at Cambridge.
“That planted the seed,” says Kinzie.
“Mentoring Sebastian was never difficult,” says Ahmed, who is currently enrolled in an M.D.-Ph.D. program at UC San Francisco following his year at Cambridge. “He brings a genuine lightness and kindness to everything he does, along with an innate ability to ask thoughtful, engaging questions and a real desire to do meaningful work.”
Throughout his undergraduate career, Kinzie has remained active in Johal’s lab as part of a research group that uses instrumentation to tackle medical or biochemical problems such as how proteins or nanoparticles interact with tumors.
The students are expected to become highly independent researchers, Johal says. “I’m not the kind of principal investigator that looks over their shoulder. I’m okay with them making mistakes, even costly ones. At the end of the day, I need to create a student that is able to take ownership of their project.”
Kinzie was named a Beckman Scholar in 2025, which funds two summers of full-time research and covers part-time work during the academic year. He spent last summer engaged in research at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in collaboration with Theodore Zwang ’11, assistant professor of neurology at Harvard and another alumnus of the Johal lab.
Following his year at Cambridge, Kinzie plans to enroll in a doctoral program in chemical biology or bioengineering.
“My future goal is to have involvement in academia and in industry,” he says. Kinzie envisions working with undergraduate and graduate students as a principal investigator but “also having a footing in industry, fast-tracking a product to market for the bettering of the world.”
He says he’d like to “give the same experiences to students that Professor Johal has given to me.”
Since 2007, nine Pomona students have been named Churchill Scholars, joining a tight-knit community of scientists.
Zoë Batterman ’24 studied the field of pure mathematics during her Cambridge year to get “a taste of cutting-edge research,” she says. “Not only did this experience allow me to expand my mathematical toolset, but it greatly expanded my network of potential collaborators.”
Vera Berger ’23 enrolled in a scientific computing program made possible by her Churchill Scholarship year en route to a doctoral program in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Being part of the Churchill cohort taught me to think about science across the boundaries of our respective fields,” she says. “We could very much learn from one another. And I now have a go-to person for any science question.”
Churchill College, one of Cambridge University’s 31 colleges, was founded by royal charter in 1960 and has a strong focus on science and technology. More than 30 of its alumni have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
The Churchill Scholars program was established at the request of Sir Winston Churchill, for whom the college is named. He desired there to be a deepening partnership between the U.S. and the U.K. to advance science and technology.