Penn State undergraduate Nate Carey earns Marshall Scholarship
Penn State student Nate Carey has earned a 2025 Marshall Scholarship, which is among the most competitive U.K. scholarships for U.S. students and recognizes academic excellence and leadership and ambassadorial potential.
Carey, of Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, is enrolled in the Integrated Undergraduate-Graduate Master of Biotechnology program in the Eberly College of Science. He also is enrolled in the entrepreneurship and innovation and military studies minors, a leader in his Army ROTC corps, and a Schreyer Scholar. He was a recipient of the 2024-25 Goldwater Scholarship, 2025 Astronaut Scholarship and a finalist for the 2025 Rhodes Scholarship.
Among his academic credentials is a wealth of undergraduate research experience. He worked as a research technician in the Sartorius Cell Culture Facility, where over the course of a year, Carey worked in the lab daily to expand, passage and observe mammalian cells. Last year, he participated in the Max Planck School Matter to Life Undergraduate Research Opportunity at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and Campus Biotech in Geneva through the EPFL Excellence in Engineering Program.
Carey is an undergraduate researcher in the Rolls Lab under Melissa Rolls, Paul Berg Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, in the Eberly College of Science. Rolls wrote that Carey dove into his work with enthusiasm, which involves using a Drosophila (fruit fly) model system and combining live imaging and genetics to try to understand what a set of mitotic proteins are doing in post-mitotic neurons. His work produced a “pivotal finding,” she said, that will shape the story the lab tells in the manuscript it is preparing.
“Nate is one of those students I feel very lucky to have selected our lab for their research home,” Rolls said. “I have no doubt that he will be successful as a scientist; he has already convinced me he will be successful in all his endeavors.”
Song Tan, Verne M. Willaman Professor of Molecular Biology in the Eberly College of Science, is a former Marshall Scholar and served on this year’s U.K. committee, which selects and prepares Penn State nominees for the scholarship.
“I am thrilled to welcome Nate into the Marshall Scholarship family,” Tan said. “Nate is an extraordinary individual with the vision to identify critical problems in our world, the wisdom to recognize the challenges he faces to solve these problems, and the compassion to care that what he does helps others. I particularly admire how adversity has motivated him to work even harder to achieve his goals. Nate embodies all that is great about Penn State, and I am so proud to have gotten to know this future leader.”
Carey also was a workforce development specialist for the Center of Excellence in Industrial Biotechnology. Under Wendy Oakes, associate director of the center, Carey learned how to manage social media promotions and mass communications with thousands of professionals in the biotech sector. That experience, he said, informed his role at BioReact Inc., a company that is developing AI-based software for bioprocesses for cell growth and product yield.
He is a part of the Society for Distinguished Alumni Mentoring through the Schreyer Honors College, receiving mentorship first from Capt. Thomas Ulmer, U.S. Navy, and later Naren Gursahaney, former president and CEO of ADT and a leader in companies such as General Electric, Tyco and Terminix. Carey also is a former president of the Society for Industrial Biotechnology at Penn State.
Carey said his path to the Marshall Scholarship, and previous awards, required “a lot of sleepless nights, just pouring everything that I had into it. Finally seeing something incredible come out of it is extremely gratifying. It's made all the work and all the sacrifice well worth it.”
He said the most significant thing he’s learned in his three and a half years at Penn State was to know when to ask for help.
“That was something that I was never very good at growing up, and as an underclassman, I just wanted to do it myself and figure it out on my own,” he said.
He said the processes for applying for the U.K. award were a step harder than previous awards, and he was grateful for the numerous people who supported him and provided their counsel, including mentors, recent U.K. award winners, and those who had earned awards decades ago. He said he also was grateful for the resources and support from Penn State Undergraduate Research and Fellowships Mentoring.
“I just want to say how grateful I am for this for the past three and a half years,” Carey said. “It’s been nothing but resources and support. It’s really an incredible institution, and for students who are willing to aggressively pursue every opportunity that pops up, Penn State is an ocean of opportunity. There's so much everywhere you go. So, take on as much as you can. Be ambitious. Know your limits but pursue as much as you can here at Penn State.”
“We applaud Nate for his commitments to scientific discovery, entrepreneurism and international relations that led to his receiving this prestigious and competitive scholarship,” said Mary Beth Williams, acting dean of the Eberly College of Science. “Nate has immersed himself in many of the in- and out-of-class opportunities available in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State to prepare for this opportunity. I cannot wait to see what the future holds for him.”
Applying for the Marshall Scholarship
Similar to other competitive scholarships and fellowships, students must be recommended by their university to apply for the Marshall Scholarship. At Penn State, Undergraduate Research and Fellowship Mentoring (URFM) works with students to determine which scholarships they are most competitive for and helps to refine applications and prepare for interviewing. The Marshall Scholarship requires students to hold a GPA of at least 3.7 and further assessment is based on academic merit, leadership potential and ambassadorial potential.
This year’s U.K. awards committee at Penn State, which helped to select and prepare candidates for the Marshall Scholarship, consisted of:
- Tineka Lebrun, URFM director
- Josephine Wee, assistant professor of food science
- Song Tan, Verne M. Willaman Professor of molecular biology
- Jacob Bourjaily, associate professor of physics
- Nick Hartman, startup solutions architecture leader at Amazon Web Services
- Darrin Thornton, associate dean for Academic Affairs and Outreach and teaching professor of music
- Rich Stoller, associate dean, Schreyer Honors College
- Justin Brown, associate professor of biomedical engineering
- Melissa Johnson, associate vice provost and associate dean of Undergraduate Education
Undergraduate Research and Fellowships Mentoring is part of Penn State Undergraduate Education.