It’s not every day you meet an undergraduate who speaks Mandarin, plays in a jazz band, and conducts space science research for NASA.

But at American University’s College of Arts and Sciences, you can meet two: fraternal twins Ihsan and Zaki Hawkins.

This week, the twins will become the first graduates of AU’s new Kay Scholars Program—created to honor the legacy of the late AU physicist Professor Dick Kay, who built a student-centered lab at NASA Goddard that later grew into AU’s Integrated Space Science and Technology Institute (ISSTI). Funded through a generous bequest by his wife Judy, the Kay Scholars Program supports exceptional undergraduates in physics—students like Zaki and Ihsan.

Physics Professor Silvina Guidoni says it was “an absolute joy” to have Ihsan and Zaki in her courses. She also mentored Zaki on a Physics Capstone project that literally set its sights on the stars.

“The project focused on modeling the Venus flybys of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe as it dove closer to the Sun,” she explains. “We met regularly to unravel the physics behind space travel, diving into Kepler’s laws, the rocket equation, and even a bit of scattering theory. The project was inspired by a paper from renowned solar physicist Dana Longcope, and Zaki brought it to life with a fantastic Python Jupyter notebook that visualized velocity-space diagrams for different planetary encounters. His energy and excitement were infectious—our meetings often felt like mission briefings at NASA!”

When the Sky’s the Limit

During their time at American University, the twins majored in Physics, minored in Chinese, performed in the AU Jazz Band (Ihsan plays the trumpet, Zaki plays the tuba), worked as undergraduate researchers for Black epiSTEMologies, and completed prestigious internships at institutions including the NASA Goddard Flight Center and Purdue University.

In addition, Zaki was awarded a NASA DC Space Grant Consortium grant and found time to referee basketball, watch sci-fi and anime, paint, play sports, read, and spend time with friends. Ihsan wrote music, played games, and worked for a local nonprofit teaching and tutoring younger students.

One of Zaki’s highlights at AU was his NASA Goddard internship, where he worked on mapping coronal mass ejections—giant bursts of magnetized plasma from the Sun. That experience helped both brothers land a research opportunity with the Large Hadron Collider project at Purdue University. 

“There we did some really cool stuff, mostly working on silicon pixel detector chips that track particles in the accelerator at CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research,” Zaki explains. Ihsan adds that it was his first real experience seeing the intersection of physics and engineering. He learned techniques like carbon fiber composite layups and how to operate a Computer Numeric Control (CNC) machine—hands-on skills that grounded his studies in real-world application.

Jazz: Patterns, Structures, and Creativity

The twins played in the AU Jazz Band for all four years, performing in more than 15 concerts. Music has been a lifelong passion for both.

“My dad bought me a trumpet when I was around six,” Ihsan recalls. Although he initially taught himself by ear, it wasn’t until he started taking high-school physics classes that music truly clicked. “Physics enhances my musical ability and vice versa,” he says. “I wouldn’t be able to do either as well as I do without the other. Now it’s a great stress reliever—being able to express my emotions in this way. And playing with the AU Jazz Band is always a great time.”

Zaki was also drawn early on to the underlying patterns of music. He began by analyzing scales and chord progressions before his creativity took hold. He notes that many AU physics majors share this balance of structure and creativity. “I have yet to find an AU physics major who wasn’t interested in music. There’s a stigma that physicists only do physics, but most of the physicists I know do a lot of extracurriculars to fuel their creativity—sometimes more than other majors.”

Different Directions, Shared Drive

Though their academic paths overlap—physics, music, language—the twins approach problems in very different ways. Zaki is expressive and creative; Ihsan is reserved and technically minded.

Zaki credits their mother with helping him bridge his language-focused thinking with the logic of STEM. He recalls struggling to learn long division as a child, while Ihsan picked it up quickly. His mom reassured him the brothers simply had different learning styles. “She knew my mind was more literature-oriented like hers,” Zaki explains. “Once I figured it out, the joy we felt together helped me see that I could do this. It helped me adjust my linguistic mind to a scientific world, which I found super cool.”

Choosing Physics and Chinese as majors challenged both sides of the twins’ brains. “That creative part of us is probably what drew us to music, too,” Zaki says. “Now Ihsan creates music, and I help him.”

And despite their parallel paths, there's no sibling rivalry between the twins. “I’m a competitive person, but my brother is my complement—not my competitor,” says Zaki. Ihsan agrees: “In the moments that matter, I know I can count on someone who understands how I think.”

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

As they prepare to graduate, Zaki and Ihsan say they are filled with gratitude—for the opportunities they found at American University, the community they built, and the platform given to them as Kay Scholars.

“I would like to use this platform to highlight how few highly regarded STEM scientists are Black, and that it is a result of many things that have restricted Black students like me from having the opportunity to explore these further STEM opportunities,” says Zaki. 

Ihsan echoes that sentiment, reflecting on the power of different perspectives and the importance of fairness in opportunity. “Everyone who puts in the same amount of work should be considered an equal chance at an opportunity regardless of where they came from, who they are, or what perspective they have,” he says.

The brothers are quick to thank Dick and Judy Kay, the AU physics community, and their parents for standing behind them every step of the way. Ihsan adds, “And thank you to the person receiving this alongside me, who grew up alongside me for 21 years and has been someone I can depend on, Zaki Hawkins.”

Looking ahead, Ihsan is keeping his options open as he explores graduate programs, hoping to find a path that weaves together his love for physics, music, and Chinese. Zaki will pursue a graduate degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. His dream? “Something awesome and nerdy—like a spaceship, a satellite, maybe even the Millennium Falcon.”

When asked if they expect to work together again in the future, Zaki says, “I hope I’ll have a life that will allow me to continue pursuing my hobbies just as AU has allowed me to—with music, Chinese, sports, and physics. I would like to collaborate with Ihsan on something in the future, but since we’re not a monolith, I just hope that we can stretch our interests as far as possible, so that we can learn from each other in whatever we do. Maybe we can invent something super cool like Warp Drives in Star Trek!”