Goldwater Scholarships were awarded last week to three Vanderbilt students: sophomore Samuel Cooper and juniors Brent Dorr and Peter Scully.

Over 1,000 students applied for a Goldwater Scholarship, given in honor of Sen. Barry Goldwater, but only 317 sophomores and juniors received them nationwide.

"I had applied before last year, so I was extremely happy that I had won it this year," Dorr said. "Obviously, it's a great honor to be recognized in this way; it's an encouraging start. My research advisor came by to congratulate me, but I had no idea I had gotten it because the e-mail had been lost or something. I was very pleased and happy about it."

Applicants were required to submit an application that included general short answer essays in addition to a research project proposal.

"My research right now is on protein folding and, particularly, the design of novel proteins for use in therapeutic research and ultimately industrial applications," said Dorr, who plans to concentrate on bioinformatics and computational structural biology. "My primary project proposal was using this as a root for drug design, coming up with new therapeutic drugs using this kind of stuff."

The study of bioinformatics uses already known data to extract useful information, Dorr said.

"The more layman's kind of tagline is that I use computers to reverse engineer the building blocks of life, which is a very pretentious way of putting it," he said.

Cooper, who has done intensive research with Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., and has papers in the process of being published, said he plans to remain in Nashville this summer.

"The application of topology is mostly in theoretical physics - string theory, that sort of thing," Cooper said. "So we wrote a couple papers which are in the process of (being printed) in a publication, but I'm mostly doing research this summer in the math department here."

Scully plans on pursuing medical physics, particularly methods to treat catastrophic childhood diseases.

Although winners were selected based on a particular project proposal, students are not required to pursue that topic of interest.

"It's not expected that it will be your primary research, but it's kind of implied," Dorr said. "You wouldn't go to the effort of coming up with a project idea you don't want to pursue."

The scholarship can award as much as $7,500 to each student, and there are few restrictions on how the money can be spent.

"I think you're supposed to meet with some financial aid advisor to work out exactly how it will be allocated, you know books and that sort of thing, but other than that they just give you a check, which will be pretty nice," Cooper said.

The winners will be recognized at the Honor Scholarship Banquet later this month, along with the recipients of other awards, including the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships.