Spectacular Charlotte Scholar Arnav Sareen Earns A Distinguished Barry Goldwater Scholarship
UNC Charlotte junior Arnav Sareen has been named the University’s fifth-ever recipient of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship — one of the nation’s most prestigious awards for undergraduate researchers.
“Research is more than just a lofty endeavor reserved for graduate students and professors,” he said. “It is a way to apply what you have learned in your courses to pressing, real-world problems, meet brilliant people who can be transformational mentors throughout your undergraduate career and be exposed to some amazing opportunities.”
The prestigious Goldwater award provides scholarships to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in science, engineering and mathematics. Sareen, a junior, was selected from an estimated pool of more than 5,000 students nominated by 482 academic institutions.
“Arnav is a spectacular and deserving Goldwater Scholarship recipient,” said Andrew Keener, assistant director for nationally competitive awards and advising in the Honors College. “What people need to also know about this scholar is his generosity and pay-it-forward mentality, qualities that really showed up in his application.”
Sareen, a Levine Scholar and a member of the Computing Honors Program, is from Cary, North Carolina and is pursuing a double major in computer science and data science, with a minor in statistics.
His future goals include earning a Ph.D. in computer science and becoming a researcher and faculty member at a leading research institution.
“I feel so fiercely passionate about teaching and mentoring in computer science,” he said, “because I truly believe it is one of a select number of fields in which one can advance from a near novice to working on the most advanced, complicated projects with just a laptop, time and patience.”
The Goldwater Scholarship represents a full-circle moment for Sareen and his family. Among his biggest influences is his grandfather, who journeyed from India to the U.S. to complete his doctorate in the 1960s and returned to his home country with stories of scientific innovation.
His grandfather died two days before the results of the scholarship were released.
“The research area I am currently involved in—the intersection of AI and high-performance computing—would make him especially proud, as its ultimate goal is to help scientists like him conduct simulations more efficiently,” Sareen said.
Sareen is studying abroad in Finland this spring, where he is focusing on fine-tuning large language models, advanced AI systems that comprehend large amounts of text. As part of his capstone project, he worked with a Finnish company to develop an education chatbot for young adults.
The project sought to create a privacy-focused, open-source model that would be a viable substitute for other proprietary offerings and reduce performance loss caused by switching models. The model also needed to produce safe, reliable results in English, Finnish and Swedish.
“Many of the conversations I have had with computer science students in Finland have centered on how Anglocentric many models tend to be,” Sareen said. “Realizing that we are risking isolating this revolutionary technology to only an English-speaking segment of the world was a powerful insight.”
Sareen also pointed to the difference that being a Charlotte student has made in his journey.
“Getting a chance to represent Charlotte on a national stage is deeply gratifying, as the school has invested a massive amount of resources into me,” he said. “From the Levine Scholars Program to all of the faculty within the College of Computing and Informatics, winning the Goldwater Scholarship is a testament to how effective support can be at UNC Charlotte.”