Panya Cao ’28 is the fifth Reedie to receive NOAA’s Hollings Scholarship, which will allow her to continue studying and communicating the concepts of marine ecology.
By Cara Nixon
September 22, 2026
Her freshman year, Panya Cao ’28 spent the summer investigating what some call the northern lung of the planet.
She was working on a documentary focused on the ecological and cultural value of maintaining old-growth temperate rainforests, the largest of which is located in Southeast Alaska, known as the Tongass—a forest with an extraordinary capacity to store and sequester carbon.
While in Alaska, the crew of the boat she was on introduced her to the Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship, a competitive award offered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that provides recipients with a two-year academic scholarship for their junior and senior years, a paid summer internship opportunity, and funding to participate in up to two national scientific conferences.
Panya had been interested in marine biology before coming to Reed, and the Hollings would offer a way to pursue that interest. She applied and waited for a response for three months, positive she’d get a rejection.
She was wrong.
“I do think I squealed very audibly walking down the stairs of Eliot as I opened the email,” Panya says.
Panya is the fifth Reedie to receive the Hollings since the scholarship was started in 2005. “Receiving the Hollings is enormously impactful for me,” she says. “It is allowing me to pay for my tuition with significantly less stress, and rely less on working during the summers.”
A biology major with a concentration in film and media studies, Panya is interested in how science can be communicated more effectively through the art of storytelling.
Next summer, she has the opportunity to work as an intern at almost any NOAA lab in the country for nine weeks and present her research in Maryland during the tenth. Her dream is to return to Alaska, where she’s been working the past two years, and study marine ecology of any sort. She’s particularly interested in studying salmon or whales.
But, she says, “As long as I'm out there on a boat in my rainboots doing lots of fieldwork I'll be happy.” The Hollings will make that possible.