Leming Named Goldwater Scholar
Matthew James Leming was awarded a 2014 Goldwater Scholarship.
The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program of Springfield, Virginia provides up to $7,500 per year for educational expenses to sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences, or engineering.
Leming, a computer science and Russian language and literature double-major, conducted research in neuroimaging at UNC and worked on artificial intelligence in St. Petersburg, Russia, on a Class of 1938 Fellowship.
Through the Carolina Students Taking Academic Responsibility through Teaching (C-START) program, Leming became accredited to teach his own course, a 15-person class combining the history and societal implications of computer science with a computer-programming component. He was also a teaching assistant for Foundations of Computer Programming.
Leming is working with UNC’s Information Technology Services to design and program an official UNC mobile phone application. He is also the founder and president of the Computer Science Club, serves as an associate justice on the Student Supreme Court, drew weekly political cartoons for the Daily Tar Heel student newspaper, and serves as the head copy editor for Carolina Scientific Magazine. Recently, he was an organizer for HackNC, which took place in Sitterson Hall.
Leming’s career goals are to pursue a doctorate in computational neuroscience, conduct research in medical imaging and teach at the university level. His ultimate hope is “to head a research laboratory that brings artificial intelligence and medical imaging to a crossroads,” he said.
Leming was the only UNC-Chapel Hill student to receive the scholarship for 2014. He was one of only 283 recipients nationwide from a pool of 1,166 nominees. Jason Reed, associate professor of biology and head of UNC’s Goldwater Scholarship selection committee, praised Leming’s research as an undergraduate as well as his career goals.
“Leming is an exceptionally able and public-spirited scientist. He is ambitious to use his computational ability to understand the workings of the brain.”