Pomona College juniors Charles Brainin ’27 and Ryan Mooney ’27 have been awarded the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for the 2026-27 academic year.
The classmates were among 454 college students recognized this spring by the Goldwater Foundation as the nation’s next generation of researchers in science, engineering and mathematics. The Goldwater Scholarship is the preeminent undergraduate award and highest governmental honor in these fields.
More than 5,000 college sophomores and juniors across the country apply for the scholarship every year. Recipients often go on to win other prestigious awards such as National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships, Churchill Scholarships and Marshall Scholarships.
Beyond financial support of up to $7,500, the Goldwater Scholarship offers valuable networking and mentorship opportunities and serves as a mark of distinction for graduate school admissions.
Both Brainin and Mooney started their research in the lab of Professor of Chemistry Malkiat Johal, and the three co-authors recently had an article accepted for publication in the prominent journal Analytical Chemistry.
Previous Pomona recipients of the Goldwater Scholarship include Chloe Marple ’26 and Sage Santomenna ’26, Daniel Gao ’25, Alexandra Turvey ’24 and Zoë Batterman ’24, and Hannah Caris ’23 and Jonathan Elisabeth ’23.
Charles Brainin ’27
Brainin has conducted research since arriving at Pomona from Brookline, Massachusetts—first in the Chemistry Department and currently in the Physics and Astronomy Department. His research on precision spectroscopy “lies directly at the intersection of both fields,” he says.
His first year, he conducted research in physical chemistry with Johal and continued the following summer through a Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) award.
The experience taught him how to formulate an independent research question, develop an experimental protocol, and translate results into a manuscript. It also clarified that his interests lay in smaller molecule systems, leading him to declare a physics major along with a minor in mathematics.
His sophomore year, Brainin transitioned to the lab of Professor of Physics Richard Mawhorter, and the following summer another SURP award supported his research at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain.
“Both in Professor Johal and Professor Mawhorter’s lab, I’ve been able to have agency in what I’m doing,” says Brainin. “Both labs have given me the opportunity and the passion to be able to think for myself and do things myself out of my interest.”
This summer, Brainin will further develop his interest in molecular physics at Emory University through an NSF grant.
“Charles has already demonstrated that he has what it takes to intentionally persist and grow as a scientist,” says Mawhorter. “I expect him to flourish wherever he goes.”
The Goldwater award, Brainin says, “affirms that the research I am doing is not only important to me but also recognized by others as part of a meaningful scientific direction that I intend to continue pursuing.”
Brainin’s career goal is to conduct research in atomic, molecular and optical physics and teach at the university level.
“I really love the teaching work that I’ve gotten to do as a mentor in some of the classes I’ve taken,” says Brainin. “Getting to continue teaching as well as helping students gain a love of research would be super fulfilling.”
Ryan Mooney ’27
Mooney was a junior in high school when his mom was diagnosed with triple-negative metastatic breast cancer.
The youngest child and the only one still living with his mom in their native Denver at the time, Mooney witnessed secondhand the standard of care for cancer and the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy.
“It’s just horrific,” he says, “and it’s fueled me ever since to work toward helping patients by developing new treatments that are more specifically targeted to the cancer itself so we’re not killing healthy cells as equally as we’re killing the cancer.”
His mom now in remission, Mooney, a molecular biology major, is conducting adoptive T-cell transfer research in Johal’s lab in hopes of one day changing the paradigm for cancer treatment.
“Ryan’s trajectory has been exceptional from the start,” Johal says. “He joined my lab as a freshman and quickly set himself apart through a rare combination of drive, focus and scientific instinct. Over time, he has developed into a truly independent researcher, contributing to multiple publications and consistently advancing projects with both rigor and creativity.”
“The Goldwater Scholarship is a fitting recognition of his accomplishments and a strong indicator of what lies ahead for him.”
While at Pomona, Mooney says professors such as Johal and Professor of Biology Daniel E. Martínez have helped him grasp the importance of remaining a curious student, researcher and person.
“I’ve learned to think about science not just as a process of asking interesting questions,” he says, “but as a discipline of actively designing ways to answer them.”
Winning the Goldwater Scholarship “makes me proud and also grateful for all of the opportunities I’ve had here at Pomona,” Mooney adds. “Looking at all of the amazing people who’ve won it in the past, it still doesn’t feel real that I’ve also gotten it.”
Mooney intends to earn a Ph.D. in either immunology, molecular biology or cancer biology and become a university professor.