CUSE Spotlights
Marcos Sanson ('26) receives the Goldwater Scholarship
Marcos Sanson ’26 received the Goldwater Scholarship in 2025. The Goldwater Scholarship Program, one of the oldest and most prestigious national scholarships in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics in the United States, seeks to identify and support college sophomores and juniors who show exceptional promise of becoming this nation’s next generation of research leaders in these fields. The award honors students for whom research (and plans to pursue a research PhD in a STEM field) are central career goals. In fall 2025 Marcos attended the Goldwater Scholar Summit and Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium on the Rice University campus in Texas.
Marcos tells us: "I was selected as a Goldwater Scholar in 2025 and am currently pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science at Grand Valley State University (expected to graduate in May 2026). My research focuses on evolutionary computation and how it can improve the performance and adaptability of complex systems, including autonomous platforms. I have conducted research on neuroevolution for robot control, machine learning for medical imaging, phylogeny-informed evolutionary algorithms, and evolvability-enhancing mutations. I have presented my work at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO), Student Scholars Day, and other venues. I plan to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science and a career at a national laboratory, with a focus on advancing autonomous systems for real-world applications."
Interest Area(s)
Computer Science
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