Garwin Family Foundation

10/14/2026

JOIN US ON ZOOM for a Q & A Session on Part 1 of the Student Scholarship Application Process!

GARWIN FAMILY FOUNDATION
PART 1 APPLICATION QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
7:00 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. (Central Time – Chicago)

During this one-hour session, applicants will ask questions about Part 1 of the Garwin Family Foundation Application Process for the Summer Sponsorship Program, and staff will be available to answer questions and provide additional guidance. The session is open to any students applying for the sponsorship.

TO ATTEND:
Visit this link for the Zoom Meeting information:
https://garwinfamilyfoundation.org/zoom-meeting-information/

We look forward to meeting with you!

10/08/2026

We are proud to share news from Carterville High School, including GFF sponsored students Mollie Mandell and Katya Chyzhyk, who were members of teams sent to the ROE 21 Brain Games at John A. Logan College.

Congratulations, everyone!

10/02/2026

Alexei reports that his sixth and final week at the RISE Internship Practicum at Boston University began with a guest lecture on pitching projects in a streamlined way, followed by an afternoon trip to the Koch Institute. The week’s lessons included learning ways of manipulating the brain, how drugs are used to treat neural issues, and brain-computer interfaces.

"Friday was the biggest day of the program — the day when we presented our work based on the knowledge we had been gaining for the past six weeks to our friends and families. The families of some of my group mates had flown in from as far as California to watch our presentation, which was pretty amazing. My brother came to watch, and he approved of the presentation, which is great. During the rest period, I saw a lot of cool posters from other people in the program, including an Internship student who had found out a way to transmit information, a type of photon, without using electricity, which I thought was super awesome. In the second presentation period, our group presented to our instructors, and they congratulated us on the quality of our project," Alexei reports.

"After the presentations ended, I got dozens of pictures with all of the friends that I had made at the program, many of whom would leave right after the symposium. After a 200-person photo with everyone in RISE on one podium, I went back to the dorm to begin packing. I ate dinner for the last time at West, and stayed up the entire night to be able to say goodbye to friends. I also, for a final time, explored the campus with two of my friends, taking some late-night photos to try and appreciate the last night of the program," Alexei says.

We are happy to hear that you enjoyed your learning experience at RISE, got an excellent review for your final presentation, and made many memorable connections. Great work, Alexei.

Learn more about Alexei’s experiences at Boston University. Visit our website at https://garwinfamilyfoundation.org

10/01/2026

We are proud to share news from Carterville High School about GFF sponsored student Catherine (Katya) Chyzhyk who was recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation for scholastic excellence!

Congratulations, Katya... We are so happy for you!

Congratulations to our National Merit Scholarship Commended Students for being recognized for their outstanding scholastic talent! The National Merit Scholarship Corporation awards this honor to students scoring in the top 3–4% nationwide on the PSAT/NMSQT. Carterville High School is proud to recognize our very own Megan Harrell and Catherine Chyzhyk!

09/30/2026

Alexei says that his fifth week at the RISE Internship Practicum at Boston University began with guest speakers discussing STEM careers and industry life, followed by a lecture on modeling different brain injuries, such as strokes and CTE.

“Karla taught us how to properly write an abstract and had us present our projects to each other to get feedback. Our idea was looking into the effects of PV+ interneuron loss on gamma synchronization in relation to schizophrenia. Schizophrenia causes PV+ interneuron loss, and PV+ interneurons are essential to timing gamma waves, the electrical impulse of your brain’s neurons cycling between on and off, which can be linked to intelligence and cognitive function. We presented this to another group, who were working on how musical pathways are affected by Alzheimer’s, and they liked our idea, which is great. The coding of the project was well on its way to completion, but complications with finding specific elements such as a usable model and parameters for our PV+ interneurons had delayed it,” Alexei explains.

When not in class, Alexei played pickleball, had dinner in Chinatown, played basketball and board games, went to a dance at the college, had ice cream with friends, and continued work on his final group project.

Learn more about Alexei’s experiences at Boston University. Visit our website at https://garwinfamilyfoundation.org

09/26/2026

We are proud to share news from CCHS about GFF sponsored student Alexei Kadyrov who recently earned a perfect score on the ACT and was named a National Merit Semifinalist.

Congratulations, Alexei. We are so proud of you!

CCHS is proud to recognize the outstanding achievements of senior Alex Kadyrov, who recently earned a perfect score on the ACT and was named a National Merit Semifinalist. The CCHS Board of Education honored Alex for these accomplishments at its September meeting.
National Merit Semifinalists are selected based on exceptional performance on the PSAT/NMSQT during their junior year. This distinction places Alex among the highest-achieving high school seniors in the nation and gives him the opportunity to compete for prestigious National Merit Scholarships.
Alex's dedication, hard work, and academic excellence exemplify the high standards of achievement at CCHS. We congratulate him on these remarkable accomplishments and look forward to all he will achieve in the future.
Please join us in congratulating Alex on these outstanding achievements!

09/25/2026

Alexei reports that week four at the RISE Internship Practicum at Boston University began with a talk on how to write a scientific abstract, requirements for creating the final class poster, a visit to Alnylam, followed by lectures on coding with NEURON and working on final class presentations. Groups were selected, and Alexei was placed in a group with Francis Bu and three other friend from the program.

“I had come up with a project revolving around sleep and modeling how synaptic pruning is dependent on protein concentrations, as I believed it was interesting and something reasonably completable in eight days… Needless to say, we did not do that. We ended up going with the general idea of analyzing the structure of a neural network composed of excitatory and inhibitory neurons and how removing inhibitory neurons affected it. We hadn’t fleshed out specifics like biological ties, but those would come later,” Alexei explains.

“The afternoon session was, again, dedicated to working on our proposals, this time adjusting what we had written based on Karla’s feedback. That evening, our group spent more time trying to fine-tune our project idea, and I found a connection to schizophrenia while researching our topic, as it causes the decay of PV+ interneurons, a specific inhibitory neuron,” Alexei adds.

Learn more about Alexei’s experiences at Boston University. Visit our website at https://garwinfamilyfoundation.org

09/24/2026

Francis reports that his last week at the RISE Internship Practicum at Boston University was spent working on his final poster project, and spending time outdoors enjoying the Boston area one last time with his newly formed friends.

"The front half of the week was spent working on our final poster project. During the fifth week, we finalized our results and finished our abstract, so this week was relatively easier in comparison. There was no code to debug, no data to extract, and no graphs to generate. Just 10+ hours of moving text boxes and images around while deciding between an infinite number of color schemes and fonts for our poster… Ultimately, we decided on a red color scheme to stand out from the other poster projects—a lot of people chose blue. After submitting our posters for printing at the front end of the week, we spent the rest of the week continuing our morning lectures and practicing our presentations in the afternoon “lab” periods," Francis reports.

"Reflecting on the past six weeks, I have come to understand the power and implications of computational modeling in the rapidly developing field of neuroscience and the importance of collaboration and networking in the grand scheme of things. Without the GFF, I would never have had the opportunity to attend RISE—or any prior program for that matter. I am truly indebted to the GFF and am a proud alumnus of the organization. Moving forward, I will continue to pursue my academic interests and hopefully give back to the GFF following my success," Francis adds.

We are happy to hear that you had an amazing learning experience at Boston University and were able to connect with so many talented students. Good Job, Francis!

Learn more about Francis’ experiences at Boston University. Visit our website at https://garwinfamilyfoundation.org

09/23/2026

Alexei reports that his third week at the RISE Internship Practicum at Boston University began with guest lectures on scientific integrity, potential career paths in biology, followed by a visit to the BROAD center at MIT. The week continued with lectures on memory, engrams, coding, and Circadian rhythms.

“The coding lecture was very interesting today as we started talking about how to model a neuron. We discussed the Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (LIF) model of neuron, which involved a 30-minute-long discussion about a circuit diagram to try and derive it. As someone who has not taken any classes involving electricity before, this was incredibly challenging to figure it out on the fly, but I now believe that I can reasonably explain it, so I’m pretty content (the entire afternoon was spent trying to understand how it works and coding my own LIF model, which I am very proud of),” Alexei explains.

The week ended with a lecture about the specifics of emotions, bonding, and stress responses and another coding lecture.

“The afternoon coding lecture was also the most inspiring lecture that I’ve ever been to, as we talked about the Hodgkin-Huxley model of the neuron. From our viewpoint, it was a slightly more advanced version of the LIF neuron. However, thinking about how it was developed, Hodgkin and Huxley must have been geniuses. With nothing more than a squid and a calculator, Hodgkin and Huxley came up with a system of differential equations that works for squids and is customizable for any organism. In real life, a part of this process involves gates for ion channels that prevent ion flow. Amazingly, these guys were able to correctly guess the amount of gates for each ion channel and how they work years before it was proven. Just incredible. Coding with it was fun, too, because the graphs I got of neurons firing actually looked like what you would see online,” Alexei adds.

Learn more about Alexei’s experiences at Boston University. Visit our website at https://garwinfamilyfoundation.org