From simulating the development of habitable exoplanets to harvesting the potential of miniscule vibrations, two University of Georgia undergraduates have been honored for furthering research in their fields of study.
Juniors Vaughn Frost and Annie Mehta are among the 454 undergraduates from across the nation to be recognized as Barry Goldwater Scholars this spring. The scholarship is the highest undergraduate award of its type for the fields of mathematics, engineering and natural sciences and provides funding for students studying within these fields.
Frost is a Foundation Fellow and Honors student from Mountain Brook, Alabama, and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering. Mehta is from New York City and is earning a bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Both started conducting research with their current labs in the spring of their freshman years, and both have worked with the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities.
Since 1995, 72 students at UGA have received the Goldwater Scholarship, which recognizes exceptional sophomores and juniors across the United States.
“The University of Georgia is proud to celebrate Vaughn and Annie for this tremendous achievement,” said President Jere W. Morehead. “Through their outstanding work as undergraduates, they are already significantly contributing to their fields of study, highlighting the remarkable opportunities available to UGA students during their time on campus.”
This year’s Goldwater recipients include 54 scholars who intend to pursue research careers in mathematics and computer science, 237 in the sciences, 98 in medicine and 65 in engineering and materials research. Ten scholars are from Georgia institutions.
“Vaughn and Annie are conducting research with their faculty mentors that will have impacts in the lab, in the air and deep into space,” said Meg Amstutz, dean of the Jere W. Morehead Honors College. “Their intellectual curiosity and excitement really exemplify why undergraduate research at UGA is thriving.”
Vaughn Frost
Frost plans to pursue a doctorate in mechanical engineering, specializing in acoustics, vibrations and fluid-structure interactions. His goal is to study the minuscule movements of vibrations to find methods to prevent their destruction and harvest their potential.
“Winning the Goldwater has affirmed my commitment to pursuing a career in research,” Frost said. “It’s really inspiring to know that a group of highly qualified people who work in my field of study believe I have the potential to reach their level of success one day. As I reflect on this award, I can’t help to be humbled and extremely grateful for all of the professors and mentors in my life who have pushed me and gone out of their way to support me in my academics; it really doesn’t feel like an individual achievement whatsoever.”
Frost’s research includes numerous projects with UGA associate professor Benjamin Davis in his Dynamic Devices and Solutions Lab. The Davis lab houses the largest university water tunnel in the Southeast, and Frost has learned how to use it, along with lasers, sensors and other equipment, to successfully run a variety of experiments.
Frost’s primary research involves looking at the impeller blades in a rocket engine and how they vibrate as they increase the flow and pressure of a fluid. He’s searching for ways to avoid catastrophic failure, also known as resonance, in rocket engines to help make launches safer and to bring down construction costs.
In addition to his primary project, Frost designed experiments that imitate fish movements, working to capture the energy of a flowing river and turn it into a usable force. He also studied how flat plates with different coatings move through the water. In January, he began working on a signal recovery optimization problem that carries important applications in the fields of dynamic testing and structural analysis.
Outside of the lab, Frost is involved in after-school tutoring through student-led organization Whatever It Takes as director of community engagement. He is an ambassador for the Morehead Honors College, a grader for an introduction to thermodynamics class and a fraternity historian for Phi Gamma Delta. Frost is also a member of the Dean William Tate Honor Society, Tau Beta Pi and a UGA Presidential Scholar.
In 2025, Frost traveled to Valencia, Spain, to spend eight weeks as an apprentice at the civil engineering firm La Mano Derecha. During his time there, he created floor plans and product designs, while also improving his Spanish.
Annie Mehta
Mehta plans to pursue a doctorate in computational astrophysics. Her goal is to narrow the search for habitable exoplanets by developing more advanced simulation software for analyzing early star formation. She wants to promote access to the findings through open-source software.
“Winning Goldwater has given me a verifiable seal of approval that I can follow a meandering trajectory that inspires me — take classes that challenge and intrigue me, chase what sparks my curiosity, be rejected from some things and accepted to others — and still have that count for something tangible,” Mehta said. “We inherit this assumption that school and mathematics and astrophysics are miserably hard. I feel encouraged that I can explore the world with a sense of joy, humor and genuine curiosity and still produce meaningful results.”
With Cassandra Hall, UGA assistant professor of computational astrophysics, Mehta is working on a project to classify protoplanetary disks, which are the birthplaces of solar systems. Using high-performance computing to work with a high volume of observational datasets, she hopes to generate new information about key planetary formation conditions.
Mehta also works in the Small Satellite Research Lab with Deepak Mishra, UGA professor of geography. She leads all communications development, which encompasses ground-to-space and space-to-ground data handling, on the upcoming mission launches. And with Phillip Stancil, UGA professor of physics, Mehta modeled the molecular emissions of young stellar objects to examine early star formation environments.
After winning a NASA L’SPACE competition against 26 other teams, Mehta and her group were awarded $10,000 by the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and Arizona State University as seed funding. They used the funding to develop a functional prototype of a solar sail steering system based on NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System.
Last summer through the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, Mehta conducted research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory. She developed skills in large-scale radio data analysis, learning to identify meaningful patterns in complex datasets.
In addition to her research, Mehta co-leads a peer mentorship program in physics and astronomy at UGA. She is a research mentor for the Fulton Science Academy’s astronomy club, a student pilot through the UGA Aviation Club and a remote tutor for School District 14 in New York. She is also a senior member of the Civil Air Patrol’s local squadron, Squadron 452, and has been volunteering with them at Athens-Ben Epps Airport.
For more information on the Goldwater Scholarship, visit https://goldwaterscholarship.gov/.
UGA’s major scholarships office, housed in the Morehead Honors College, provides students across campus with assistance as they apply for national, high-level scholarships. For more information, contact Jessica Hunt at jhunt@uga.edu or visit https://honors.uga.edu/scholarships/external-scholarships/.