Karty is one of only 441 students to be awarded the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship out of an applicant pool of 5,000+.
Jacob Karty ‘26 has been named as a 2025 Goldwater Scholarship recipient. Karty is a Lumen Scholar and Honors Fellow with majors in engineering and computer science and minors in mathematics and physics. He is Elon’s ninth Goldwater Scholar.
The award, given by The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, provides scholarships to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. Scholars all demonstrate an early passion for research, often exhibited by completing multiple projects at the undergraduate level. To apply, all students must first receive university nomination—which can be a competitive process itself—and universities can only nominate up to four students per year, meaning that the competition at the national level is particularly stiff. This year, Goldwater received over 5,000 applications and named 441 scholars, Karty among them. Karty had his sights set on Goldwater before even beginning at Elon.
“My biggest motivation for applying to the Goldwater Scholarship was my dad, Professor Joel Karty,” he explained. “He is proud to have mentored Geoffrey Lynn, the first Goldwater recipient in Elon’s history, so it is really fulfilling for it to come full circle with me receiving the Goldwater Scholarship as well.”
Karty’s main research interest is robotics, specifically agricultural robotics, and he is no stranger to the research process. He began college-level research as a senior in high school when he had the chance to work with Jon Su, associate professor of engineering, on a project left unfinished by two students who’d graduated.
“I started working with Jacob when he was in high school, and even then he was one of the brightest students I’ve ever encountered: Jacob literally accomplished in a day what took a team of students a year,” said Su.
The pair kept this momentum going and evolved the project into an Honors Fellows thesis proposal called “Lensfree Holographic Imaging and Machine Learning to Protect Freshwater Resources” that ultimately won Karty the Lumen Prize.
“Using a lensfree imaging setup that I designed and built, I take pictures of a sample of activated sludge from a wastewater treatment plant as I vary the amount of food this sample receives,” Karty explained. “Then, using machine learning techniques, I am currently thinking a convolutional autoencoder combined with K means clustering, I will predict the harmful foaming of the bacteria.”
His Lumen research is only the beginning. On campus, Karty has also worked extensively with Blake Hament, assistant professor of engineering, on a project utilizing 3D data collection to individually farm pea plants. Like Su, Hament sings Karty’s praises, commending him for his “wonderful blend of intellect, creativity, perseverance, and strong work ethic.” Off campus, Karty completed an NSF REU at Oregon State University where he built an apple picking robotic gripper and a data collection system that will allow the robot to use Learning from Demonstration to pick an apple like a human would.
All of this is only the beginning for Karty. Following his graduation in 2026, he plans to earn a doctorate in Robotics to continue his work researching and developing agriculture robotics to produce food more efficiently.
Karty is the ninth Elon student to be awarded the Goldwater Scholarship, following Rony Dahdal ’26, Danielle DaSilva ’24, Madison George ’23, Ashlyn Crain ’22, Anna Altmann ’23, Mariana Kneppers ’18, Kelsey Van Dalfsen ’12 and Geoffrey Lynn ’07. Elon students interested in the Goldwater Scholarship or other nationally competitive fellowships are invited to contact the National and International Fellowships Office.