Madison Guyette, a junior molecular genetics major at the University of Vermont, is the university’s only 2026 Goldwater Scholar and the fifteenth UVM student to win the award since 1989. A native of Swanton, Vermont who first visited campus for a childhood chemistry camp, she works in Dr. Nimrat Chatterjee’s lab on translesion synthesis — a DNA damage bypass pathway that lets damaged cells survive in a mutagenic state, with major implications for cancer formation and drug resistance. Her projects include how inhibiting the REV1 protein affects the cell cycle and whether REV1 inhibition can resensitize resistant colorectal cancer cells to oxaliplatin and 5-fluorouracil. Guyette, who also won the 2026 CALS Alexander Kende Academic Merit Award, plans a Ph.D. in cancer and DNA repair research.