Goldwater Scholar
Alenka Doyle ’26, a double major in neuroscience and English, has received a Barry Goldwater Scholarship, one of the most prestigious awards for students interested in pursuing careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering.
Doyle also is a coxswain for the Trinity men’s varsity rowing team, and she said that research, like athletics, requires discipline. “Practice is not always going to be fun. You have to be committed to continuing the work and focusing more on why you’re doing it rather than what you’re doing in the moment,” she said. “Research may seem boring or tedious at times, and you don’t always feel like you’re contributing to a project as much as you want to be, but you need the discipline to keep going.”
This is one of the lessons Doyle, of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, has learned through her work in the lab of Associate Professor of Psychology Michael A. Grubb, where she studies visual attention. She said that she never considered studying neuroscience before coming to Trinity. As an avid writer since she was a child, she already knew she would pursue a creative writing concentration through her English major. Doyle also had an interest in biochemistry and was invited to join Trinity’s Interdisciplinary Science Program (ISP), a Gateway Program for first-year students.
“As I learned more about neuroscience, I realized that I find people really interesting, more so than I find cells interesting,” Doyle said. It was through ISP that she was matched with Grubb during her first year at Trinity. “I thought his research was compatible with my interests and sounded like something I’d be happy to do as a day-to-day job,” Doyle said. “Professor Grubb really allows students to contribute a lot, take the lead on projects, and do work independently. I really appreciate that because I’m someone who wants to learn things hands-on.”
In addition to her lab work and her rowing, for which she recently was named an Empacher-Intercollegiate Rowing Coaches Association First Team All-American—the first Bantam coxswain to earn this honor, Doyle also is on the executive boards of Trinity’s Neuroscience Club and English Honors Society. Last year, she received a Beckman Scholars Award, which supports undergraduate student research.
“I’m really hoping to go to graduate school to do more research in the neuroscience or cognitive science fields,” Doyle said. “I’ve worked in Professor Grubb’s lab for the past two summers, and I found that to be a fun process. It felt like something I can see myself doing every day and enjoying, so that committed me to this career path.”
