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DALLAS () – SMU senior Joshua Ange is the first SMU student to receive a to spend one year conducting research with a scientist at Cambridge University, in Cambridge, England. Ange, a physics and mathematics major and computer science and English minor, is one of 16 students nationwide to receive the 2025-2026 award and the only student selected from Texas. He’ll continue his SMU astrophysics research with cosmologists Boris Bolliet and Blake Sherwin at Cambridge and will finish with a Master’s degree.

“Joshua is on track to be a very successful researcher,” says Joel Meyers, SMU associate professor of physics and one of Ange’s faculty mentors. “He has already accumulated a wide range of research experience on advanced topics that is relevant for current and upcoming experiments.”

Recipients are selected based on academic and research achievement. Ange’s SMU research began early, studying dark matter with physics faculty members in his first year at SMU and later, as a sophomore, publishing a scientific paper with faculty members about dark matter research. He received the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship as a sophomore in recognition of his work.

Ange credits a senior physics major for inspiring him to take a deep dive into research as soon as he arrived on campus. When he visited SMU as a high schooler, the student told him he had one regret – he waited too long to become involved in research.

Note taken.

Pencil and paper calculations still play a role in physics research, Ange says.

“I jumped in way before I thought I was ready,” he says. “I’m glad I did.”

He published his second scientific paper during his junior year, this time as a first author, focused on CMB radiation – or cosmic microwave background. NASA describes CMB as the “Universe’s baby picture,” the oldest waves of light in the Universe that are visible by high-powered telescopes. Scientists believe the Universe was hot, dense, and opaque when it formed billions of years ago. The CMB offers insight from when the Universe became transparent, 380,000 years after it was formed, just a baby in Universe-years.

Ange also studied CMB at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, and has engaged in three other SMU research projects outside of astrophysics.

Adding research to his already busy SMU schedule as a President’s Scholar, 4.0 student, editor of the SMU Undergraduate Research Journal, and member of the SMU Ballroom Dance Club is “easy,” Ange says.

“I just really like it,” he says. “I’d like to make astrophysics research my career.”

Ange’s faculty research mentor, associate professor of physics Joel Meyers, says that involvement in undergraduate research is one of the most important criteria for graduate school admission.

Ange has loved science as long as he can remember. His parents supported his interests by sending him to iSchool of Lewisville, Texas, even though it wasn’t in their wheelhouse, he says. In high school, he joined NASA’s highly selective HUNCH Design and Prototype program, where he served as project manager for a student team creating a model system to deliver supplies to Mars, winning recognition as a national finalist and sparking his interest in astrophysics.

Now the senior is poised to begin the next step toward his goal of becoming an astrophysicist. His SMU physicist mentor Joel Meyers expects Ange’s undergraduate research experience to serve him well.

“Research relies upon a different and broader set of skills than coursework and provides a path to rapidly learn new skills,” Meyers said. “For undergraduate students who wish to pursue a career in science, involvement in research is the single best way to set them up for success.”