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In March, Dr. Sanchita Hati, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, received the 2026 CUR Outstanding Mentorship Award from the chemistry division.

“I was not expecting this at all,” Gomes says. “On a national level this is pretty big, and I am still quite surprised — it’s actually turned out to be amazing.”

Gomes currently is mentoring eight students who will present five distinct projects at 91����'s Celebration of Excellence in Research and Creative Activity, which begins April 27.

“It’s a little strange to suddenly be seen as halfway through my career, but I guess that’s about right,” Gomes says. “But it means I have much more time to keep working with undergraduates, which is so important to me.

“The world today, it seems, expects our graduates to be fully prepared for industry the moment they graduate. That kind of preparation requires a lot of learning beyond the classroom, and our mentored, collaborative research, working with a team and applying their knowledge, will help give them that preparation.”

As someone who spent part of his own career mentoring students in chemistry research, Dr. Michael J. Carney, interim chancellor, is pleased to congratulate Gomes on this national distinction.

“Dr. Gomes is the epitome of excellence in terms of faculty mentorship for our students,” Carney says. “Rahul is not only a gifted and talented researcher, but he also has the unique ability to interact and inspire great things in the students he collaborates with on important undergraduate research projects. He is passionate about engaging Blugolds in meaningful research and discovery, and his leadership and drive to excel creates life-changing opportunities for our students.”

A mentoring record that stands on its own

Dr. Alex Smith, chair emeritus of computer science, submitted nomination materials for Gomes, and describes him, in part, as someone who listens, makes time for those seeking his help and is “always willing to solve problems and get things done.”

“I am reminded of the adage, ‘If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.,’” Smith says. “This aptly exemplifies Rahul and helps explain why he is so effective as a mentor for undergraduate research students and is so successful in broadening undergraduate research across our institution. He deserves this mid-career recognition by the Council on Undergraduate Research.”

Gomes has received several other awards recognizing his student mentoring, including:

• 2024 Emerging Mentor in Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Award, 91���� Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
• 2024 Collaborator of the Year Award, Mayo Clinic Health System Northwest Wisconsin
• 2024 Best Paper Award with lead undergraduate student. IEEE International Conference on Electro Information Technology

This CUR award is not simply based on numbers, but the following figures help give some context to the volume of Gomes’ research impact at 91����:

• Since joining the 91���� faculty in 2020, Gomes has mentored 72 undergraduate research students, building a sustained research program that integrates artificial intelligence, medical imaging and high-performance computing.
• Gomes’s mentees have co-authored 17 articles in peer-reviewed, discipline specific journals.
• Undergraduates in his program have delivered 34 institutional and regional conference presentations and completed 23 poster presentations involving 53 students at 91����’s Celebration of Excellence in Research and Creative Activity.

Gomes says his prolific research program was not necessarily his initial intent but rather grew somewhat organically from what he calls “sort of a pipeline” of interested students and some Blugold Fellows research scholars who began their research with him.

“In 2020, we had quite a few computer science students who were hungry for some different academic experiences before they graduated,” Gomes says.

“I was trying to build my own research agenda with health sciences and AI, we had the Mayo collaboration and the start of the Biomedical Innovator Scholars program — the ball just got rolling. Projects were crossing into more majors, senior students were starting to mentor younger students. It just evolved to what it is now.”

Current and past mentees agree — Gomes is an exceptional mentor

Paige Keller, a senior computer science major, has been conducting bioinformatics and machine learning research with Gomes for the past four years. In summer 2025, she also was selected for a multicampus AI internship program at Royal Credit Union for which Gomes was the faculty lead at 91����.

“Thanks to Dr. Gomes, I was able to present my research at the 2023 National Conference on Undergraduate Research and in 2025 at Research in the Rotunda in Madison, where I shared my findings directly with state legislators and other policymakers. My work with Dr. Gomes has resulted in one peer-reviewed journal publication as co-author and one article currently under review as first author,” Keller says.

“When I saw the email that Dr. Gomes had received this award, I was filled with joy because there is no one more deserving.”

The Royal Credit Union internship program was a great example of what Gomes sees as the advantage of the integration 91���� has in the community, the partnerships he and others across campus have helped establish, giving Blugolds recognizability in the local job market.

“Student internships and research collaborations with organizations like Royal Credit Union and Mayo Clinic Health System have worked out exceedingly well,” Gomes says. “Of course, we always hope those students might be hired after graduation, but we know for sure that these entities have come to trust that our students will always get the job done, as an intern or an employee.”

Zach Caterer, a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder was a first-year student at 91���� when he began working with Gomes on an interdisciplinary deep learning project aimed at diagnosing kidney cancers.

Despite having what he says was “zero experience” for the work, Caterer says Gomes saw his potential and he soon became fully integrated into the research team, a team on which he later became lead student. The project resulted in Caterer’s first first-author publication in the journal Bioengineering, with Gomes as senior author.

“My work with Dr. Gomes was a formative mentoring relationship that shaped my development as a scientist and ultimately influenced my path toward pursuing a Ph.D.,” Caterer says.

“Dr. Gomes cultivates not only technical ability but scientific identity, independence and scientific curiosity in undergraduate researchers. My journey, from a freshman with no coding experience, to a computational Ph.D. student with multiple first-author computational-based publications and mentoring experience, illustrates the transformative impact of his approach.”

Gomes says recognition like the CUR award is gratifying, but more importantly, it serves as motivation to continue building the undergraduate research ecosystem at 91����.

“My main goals moving forward are to keep working in health sciences, but also work on the explainable AI, mainly focusing on the probabilistic models,” Gomes says. “I hope to keep working with Mayo, where our students are having amazing opportunities. But smaller businesses in the community may need help exploring how AI can work for their organization, and our students can be the experts for them through capstones and internships.

“Most of all, I want to infuse knowledge and foster excitement in these students,” Gomes concludes. “That’s the work I see myself doing at the senior level.”