April 9, 2026

by Lauren Ferguson

A Ramapo College of New Jersey neuroscience and biochemistry major has been chosen for one of the oldest and most prestigious undergraduate STEM scholarships in the United States.

Franco Miyashiro ’27, a first-generation scholar from Pompton Lakes, NJ, is the first-ever Ramapo College student to be selected for the Goldwater Scholarship. He is one of 454 scholars from colleges and universities across the U.S., such as Princeton, Duke and  Cal-Berkeley, who will be awarded the prestigious scholarship for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Established in 1986 in honor of former U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, the scholarship was designed to identify, encourage, and financially support outstanding college sophomores and juniors interested in pursuing research careers in the sciences, engineering and mathematics.

“The Goldwater Scholarship is widely considered the most prestigious undergraduate STEM scholarship, and they couldn’t have chosen a more deserving student than Franco,” said Rebecca Root, director of prestigious fellowships and scholarships at Ramapo, who guided Miyashiro in his application process. “Franco is an exceptional young scientist and a star within our McNair, first-gen and Honors communities.”

Miyashiro – a McNair Scholar, member of the Ramapo’s Honors Program, and a Legacy Leader for the College’s  First-Generation Student Center – said “it feels so exciting” and “surreal” to be selected for the scholarship. “I am happy that I am able to represent first-generation Latino college students. I feel like this award is very important to me in that sense, because it just opens so many more doors for me,” he said.

Franco Miyashiro ’27 is a neuroscience and biochemistry major at Ramapo.

Past recipients have gone on to other prestigious awards like the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Fellowship, Rhodes Scholarship, Churchill Scholarship and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. And Goldwater alumni can be found conducting research that is helping defend the U.S., finding cures for catastrophic diseases and teaching future generations of scientists, mathematicians and engineers, according to the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation.

In his application, Miyashiro submitted an essay on a research project proposal. His essay focused on advancing the research he conducts with Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience and Psychology Dr. Christian Reich in Ramapo’s Behavioral Neuroscience Lab.

Miyashiro assists Reich in researching the endocannabinoid system of the brain and how it affects fear memory and the retrieval of fear memory in rats, he explained. “I wrote about pushing these studies a bit further, and instead of studying the fear acquisition and recall, I wanted to look at how we can take that and then also look at the renewal of a fear memory,” Miyashiro said. He said the research’s “general implications in the real world” could relate to a fear memory triggering someone with anxiety or PTSD.

Reich is proud of his mentee who he works so closely with in the lab. “Franco is passionate about neuroscience and is one of the rare high-achieving students that I have the privilege of teaching and am mentoring in my lab,” Reich said.

Before coming to Ramapo, Miyashiro said he was generally interested in neuroscience, but the support and experiences he has had as a Roadrunner have refined his path. Miyashiro credits his mentors at Ramapo with helping him along the way, including Reich, Dr. Sandra Suarez, director of the McNair Scholars Program and the college’s STEM Center, and Dr. Naseem Choudhury, professor of psychology and neuroscience.

“Taking more classes here and getting to know my professors and doing more research has definitely gotten me more in tuned to this specific part of neuroscience, that is specifically pharmacology, chemistry, biochemistry, things like that,” he said.

Franco Miyashiro ’27 conducts research in Ramapo’s Behavioral Neuroscience Lab, under Dr. Christian Reich.

His experience at Ramapo also afforded him the opportunity to spend eight weeks in the Child Health Institute of NJ Summer Research Program (CHIRP) last summer, thanks to a partnership between Ramapo’s neuroscience program and the Honors Program at Rutgers New Brunswick.

A prestigious, highly-selective research program, CHIRP focuses on “research training in the understanding of mechanisms underlying childhood diseases with mentoring by Robert Wood Johnson Medical School faculty” and includes “hands-on laboratory research, weekly exposure to clinical research, as well as a symposium at which students present their research findings,” according to the Honors Program at Rutgers New Brunswick.

Ultimately, Miyashiro said he is interested in both medicine and research, and wants to pursue a joint MD PhD program after he graduates from Ramapo. “I would like to go into psychiatry and then if I were to do research on top of that, I would focus on pharmacology,” he said. He would like to investigate the biological mechanisms behind psychiatric diseases and discover drugs that can alleviate them.

He also plans to continue to pave the way for first-generation Latinos to pursue research and scholarship opportunities.

“I really want to help others get the scholarship because it really does make a mark on your career,” he said.