Hopkins BME undergrad Lance Xu awarded Goldwater Scholarship

Johns Hopkins sophomore Lance Xu has been awarded the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, recognizing his exceptional promise in the field of biomedical engineering.

Named in honor of late Senator and Major General Barry Goldwater, the award is one of the oldest significant national scholarships focusing on STEM fields.

This year, the Goldwater Scholarship Foundation is supporting 441 new scholars selected from an applicant pool of about 5,000. Each scholar will receive up to $7,500 per academic year toward the cost of tuition, mandatory fees, books, and room and board.

Xu wants to devote his career to investigating the mechanisms behind cancer cell progression to find common biomarkers that can lead to more precise and effective therapies. Building on his research in high school at the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center on the effects of an oncogene on liver cancer progression, Xu joined Andrew Holland’s lab at the School of Medicine upon his arrival at JHU and started with a project focused on investigating AURKA function in acentrosomal cells. He has since developed increasingly independent projects in the Holland Lab on the regulation via gene TRIM-37 of centrosomes, potentially offering a new avenue for TRIM protein-based therapeutics. This work has earned him a co-author credit on an article in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology and second-author credit on a paper submitted to The EMBO Journal.

At the end of his first year, Xu began working additionally in Jordan Green’s lab in the Department of Biomedical Engineering to gain translational research experience. In the Green Lab, he is working on two projects: one utilizing biodegradable polymeric nanoparticles to deliver nucleic acid cargos for gene editing of the heart, another synthesizing new polymers useful in cancer therapeutics.

Beyond his research, Xu devotes considerable energy to academic support for peers and high schoolers. He serves as assistant director and head lecturer for the Organic Chemistry Initiative and a PILOT leader, in both roles helping JHU peers with the challenges of organic chemistry. He founded and leads a volunteer organization to provide free resources for high schoolers for AP courses and finding research opportunities, too, and volunteers with Charm City STEM league.

To learn more about applying for the Goldwater Scholarship and other scholarships, visit the university’s National Fellowship Program website.

Read about all the Goldwater Scholars from Johns Hopkins on the Hub.