Junior undergraduate Thomas Reimer has been selected to receive both a 2025 Barry Goldwater Scholarship and an American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (ACS SURF). He is one of four Notre Dame students selected for the 2025 Goldwater Scholarship.
Thomas is an honors chemistry major who works in the laboratory of Professor Brandon Ashfeld. His research has focused on creating new catalytic C-H functionalization methodologies for indoles and other industrially relevant molecular scaffolds, which serve as skeletons or backbones for more complex molecules . Moving forward, Thomas plans to expand his study of organic synthesis to greener or more facile transformations. Specifically, he aims to apply organic methods to biological systems, pursuing the use of artificial enzymes or similar compounds to modify complex, therapeutic natural products.
Granted by The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, the highly prestigious Goldwater scholarship is awarded to exceptional students who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, or engineering. For the 2025 competition, 441 total students were selected from a pool of 1,350 nominees at 445 academic institutions.
The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program is overseen by the Division of Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. These competitive fellowships, given to approximately 15 students each year from across the country, provide funding to complete summer research at the student’s home institution and to travel to an industrial campus in the fall to attend a dinner, to be recognized at an awards ceremony, and to present their summer research results.
Thomas will pursue his Ph.D. in organic chemistry using the Goldwater Scholarship after furthering his research this summer with the SURF award. He has previously studied in both Japan (summer language immersion program) and Germany (NSF International Research Experiences for Students). He also works as an Analytical Laboratory Technician in the Notre Dame Materials Characterization Facility.