Congratulations to Honors College student and William Aiken Fellow, James Peyla, on being named a 2016 Goldwater Scholar from a field of over 1,150 applicants. James is majoring in Marine Biology at the college and hopes to achieve a Ph.D. in Marine Biology as well. His career goal is to conduct research on the biology of cephalopod mollusks and teach at a university.
Additionally, congratulations to Lucien Jay on receiving an honorable mention. Lucien is an Honors College student pursuing a major in Biochemistry. He hopes to obtain an M.D./Ph.D. degree with an eventual focus on pathology and drug discovery (ideally applying the research and skills of organic chemistry directly to the field of medicine).
The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986 to honor Senator Barry Goldwater, who served his country for 56 years as a soldier and statesman, including 30 years of service in the U.S. Senate. The purpose of the Foundation is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue research careers in these fields.
For more information on the Goldwater Scholarship or any other Nationally Competitive Award, please contact Dr. Anton Vander Zee (nationalawards@cofc.edu) or stop by the NCA office at 6 Green Way, second floor, from 10-2 on Tuesday and 10-1 on Thursday and by apt.
This past summer James collected data on squid scaling relationships, studying how different parts of the body grow as the animal gets older. After collecting this data with Dr. Podolsky at Grice, he went back to Maryland where he interned at the Invertebrate Zoology Department at the National Museum of Natural History, a branch of the Smithsonian. He curated, assessed 
the condition of, and partially photographically documented a cephalopod collection from 1906. After his stint there, he finished up his study abroad program through CIEE in Bonaire, an island in the Southern Caribbean: as part of the program, he conducted a research project on the impacts of diving on the local coral reefs; along with his professors he produced a manuscript, with the hopes that it will be published in a scientific journal within the next year or two.
Since last summer, James has initiated an independent research project in which he is investigating the distribution of the local species of squid as part of Dr. Robert Podolsky’s lab at the Grice Marine Laboratory. As part of this research, he aims to determine how the species’ distribution has changed over the past thirty years and what kinds of habitats the squid prefer at different stages of their life cycle. By accomplishing these two goals, he hopes to contribute to the understanding of why this species is the only known species of squid to inhabit brackish water. He wants to publish the work as his honors bachelor’s essay and even as a peer-reviewed journal article. In March, he presented coral reef research (which he conducted while in Bonaire) at the Forty-Fifth Annual Benthic Ecology Meeting in Portland, Maine. In addition to his research activities, he volunteers as an exhibit guide at the South Carolina Aquarium, captains the College’s Academic Team, and tutors mathematics at the Center for Student Learning.
This summer, James will be participating in the Biological Discovery at Woods Hole program hosted by the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts; this 9-week Research Experiences for Undergraduates program is funded by the National Science Foundation. During the program, James will study cephalopod skin structure under the mentorship of Dr. Roger Hanlon and Dr. Stephen Senft. Additionally, he plans on interning at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History for two weeks and on tagging sharks and rays for a week in Clearwater, Florida, with the Coastal Marine Education and Research Academy.
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