Junior wins Goldwater scholarship
Pitt junior Alexandre Gauthier has been named a 2014 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship winner for his outstanding undergraduate research in condensed matter physics.
He joins junior Emily Crabb, becoming Pitt’s second 2014 Goldwater Scholar and the 43rd Pitt student to receive the honor since 1995.
The scholarship encourages students to pursue careers in mathematics, the natural sciences or engineering. It goes toward tuition, room and board, fees and books for the student’s remaining period of study.
Gauthier is majoring in physics in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences.
Since his freshman year at Pitt, Gauthier has served as an undergraduate researcher in the lab of Jeremy Levy, a professor of physics and astronomy and director of the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute. Gauthier’s work within Levy’s lab has centered on his design and development of technologies that have enhanced the lab’s productivity. Gauthier’s innovations include the production of an advanced canvas analyzer, used to measure the electrical properties of multiterminal devices, and a low temperature scanning probe microscope, used to study electromechanical properties of single-electron transistors.
During the summer of 2013, Gauthier interned in the Attosecond Physics Research Group of physicist Eleftherios Goulielmakis at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany.
During his internship, Gauthier assisted in the design of specialized computer software that supported the development of a waveform synthesizer, a device that generates customized light pulses that are used to study electrons in atoms.
Gauthier also has received Pitt’s Honors Tuition Scholarship, the Brackenridge Research Fellowship, the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium Research Scholarship, the Julia Thompson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Writing and the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship.