OURS National Scholarships

National Scholarship Recipients

Cooper Jacobus 2023-2024

Cooper Jacobus (’25, Astrophysics and Logic) is passionate about Computational Physics and fascinated with Cosmology and Machine Intelligence. He currently works toward solving problems in Cosmology using AI methods at UC Berkeley’s Department of Astronomy and Berkeley Lab’s Computational Cosmology Center. His research attempts to leverage the latest developments in technology to gain new insights into the origins of the universe. Questions about what came before the Big Bang have captured his imagination, and he is using next-generation supercomputers to simulate the birth of the Cosmos. He hopes to remain […]

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Nitish Dashora 2022-2023

Nitish Dashora (EECS, ‘24) was born and raised in Columbus, OH. He is extremely interested in machine learning algorithms for general intelligence, namely those concerned with robotics. He has been researching AI algorithms for high-speed, off-road self-driving at Berkeley AI Research (BAIR). He has also been working with the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience to explore semantically meaningful learning representations in computer vision. He recently worked at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory with autonomous racing and published as a first author in the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). He […]

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Arun Johnson 2022-2023

Arun Johnson (CBE, ’23) from Redwood City, CA, has long been interested in sustainable chemistry. He began researching carbon capture, fusion energy, and nanomaterials for cleaning car exhaust in high school, winning an Emergent Ventures grant and the Pioneer Tournament. As an undergraduate, he has been performing research on the use of nanomaterials for selective water purification in Prof. Jeffrey Long’s group. He is also the Vice President of the Biofuels Technology Club, which converts waste cooking oil from the dining halls into diesel fuel. He is interning at Terraform […]

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Orion Ning 2021-2022

Orion Ning is a senior (’22) majoring in physics and mathematics at UC Berkeley. He has been involved in research in both theoretical and experimental particle physics, as well as in cosmology. Orion’s research work spans a broad range of open problems and ideas, in particular studying special types of quantum field theories, parameterizing dark energy and gravity theories, and conducting precision tests for Beyond-Standard-Model physics. He’s excited about these topics and their intersections with each other, and is in general fascinated by our models of physics at the smallest […]

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Bhavish Dinakar 2019-2020

Bhavish Dinakar graduated in 2020 with a B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering and a triple minor in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science. Bhavish is passionate about combating climate change. At Berkeley, he was the Vice President of the Biofuels Technology Club, a student organization that aimed to convert waste cooking oil from dining halls into biodiesel to power campus transit. He was also an undergraduate researcher in the labs of Professors Jeff Long and Jeff Reimer, where he developed new materials to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As a recipient […]

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