Rhodes scholars share their Oxford ambitions — Harvard Gazette

Whether or not inspecting animal ethics, combating AI bias, or weighing the values important to a functioning democracy, Harvard’s latest Rhodes Students have made their mark throughout a large expanse of disciplines. These eight seniors, representing 4 nations and a number of other U.S. states, will proceed their educational pursuits on the College of Oxford subsequent 12 months. They shared their plans, accomplishments, and what it was wish to obtain the information of their award.

Matthew Anzarouth.

Niles Singer/Harvard Workers Photographer

Matthew Anzarouth

Montreal, Canada

Matthew Anzarouth was at dwelling with household in Montreal when he bought the cellphone name that he had gained a Rhodes Scholarship for Canada. Anzarouth was certainly one of two recipients from the area that features Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime provinces.

“I felt a mixture of shock, pleasure, and profound gratitude,” Anzarouth stated. “This chance is a rare privilege, and I’m actually eager to benefit from it.”

Anzarouth is at the moment writing a thesis on Canadian federalism and multiculturalism, with an emphasis on language coverage in Quebec and Indigenous self-determination. The Mather Home resident is utilizing political idea to look at the problem of reconciling common particular person rights with group rights particular to Canada’s nationwide minorities.

“I’m utilizing political idea as a manner of understanding — and hopefully higher resolving — the problem of coexistence in a culturally numerous federation,” Anzarouth stated. “The thesis work has helped me keep engaged with my nation’s politics and replicate on how I wish to contribute.”

On campus, Anzarouth is an undergraduate analysis fellow on the Weatherhead Heart for Worldwide Affairs, and an editor and podcast host for the Harvard Political Overview.

At Oxford, he hopes to proceed his research of political idea, specializing in questions of easy methods to steadiness competing claims for cultural preservation and easy methods to steadiness energy between legislative and judicial our bodies of presidency. He hopes to finally attend legislation faculty.

Lena Ashooh

Shelburne, Vermont

Focus: Particular focus in animal research

The summer time after her first 12 months on campus, Lena Ashooh labored as a analysis assistant in Puerto Rico, finding out the impacts of pure catastrophe and trauma on the habits of a colony of free-ranging macaque monkeys. It was a pivotal second for the Kirkland Home resident, who stated it felt like observing an “extraordinarily subtle society of people.”

“That was the place I initially had the concept, had been the situations that animals are in to vary fully, they could behave in ways in which we by no means imagined,” Ashooh stated. “This led me, in philosophy, to understanding how we’d flawed animals within the beliefs we now have about them and to be interested by how we’re managing land, the choices we’re making about who has entry to land, and who ought to be concerned within the decision-making course of.”

Ashooh designed a particular focus in animal research, combining political philosophy, authorities, and animal psychology. She is an undergraduate fellow on the Edmond and Lily Safra Heart for Ethics, has written for the Harvard Overview of Philosophy, and co-founded Harvard School Animal Advocates. Off-campus, she works as a lab supervisor in animal cognition scientist Irene Pepperberg’s parrot lab at Boston College.

“I say that to check animal research is to check social injustice and offers us a brand new manner of understanding how oppression and violence happens, and the way ethical complacency and inaction happen,” stated Ashooh, who’s planning to finally attend legislation faculty. “One of many key questions that animal research permits us to handle is: How is it that folks might be led to have a look at struggling and resolve to not act on it?”

Ashooh hopes to check philosophy subsequent 12 months, specializing in the query of what it means to deal with and respect an animal as a person.

Shahmir Aziz

Lahore, Pakistan

Focus: Biomedical engineering and arithmetic, secondary in laptop science, language quotation in French

As an undergraduate researcher in several Harvard labs, Shahmir Aziz has analyzed the affect of bodily exertion on the glycolytic ranges of diabetes sufferers and has investigated nano-lipids as potential drug supply vesicles. As an intern at Novo Nordisk, he has centered on optimization of drug-delivery processes.

He desires to maintain engaged on the reducing edges of biotechnology, and he desires to assist others accomplish that as properly, in his native Pakistan.

“In the long term, I hope to assist begin a tradition of startups and biotech in Pakistan, in order that college students and different innovators can develop out their concepts,” stated the Adams Home resident named certainly one of two Rhodes Students for Pakistan.

A primary-year course in quantitative physiology taught by Linsey Moyer solidified Aziz’ chosen discipline of examine. He additionally took programs in authorities and political philosophy, feeding an equal ardour for worldwide relations.

At Oxford, Aziz plans to pursue a grasp’s in bioengineering, adopted by a second diploma in diplomacy and world governance — arenas during which he’s additionally made significant contributions on campus.

A member of the management staff of Harvard’s Worldwide Relations Council, Aziz helped the College’s Mannequin United Nations staff win two main intercollegiate competitions. “The chance I’ve cherished most at Harvard has been to work together with college students from all extremes and opposites of background, pursuing all nature of topics, and dreaming all ranges of noble desires,” Aziz wrote in his scholarship utility.

A few of these interactions have are available his 4 years enjoying Harvard Membership Tennis, as a sports activities editor with The Harvard Crimson, and as a course assistant within the Division of Arithmetic.

Tommy Barone

Little Falls, New Jersey

Tommy Barone desires to know what individuals imagine, and why.

Barone at the moment is finding out what he calls a “disaster of liberalism,” or the philosophical values important to wholesome democracy. Specifically he’s interested by how finest to know the beliefs of individuals partaking in illiberalism in democratic societies.

“It’s really easy to create a story about why one thing essential or worrying or disruptive in society is occurring that serves your ends,” Barone stated. “I believe it’s a civic obligation that we hearken to what individuals must say and attempt to perceive them. If you’re making an attempt to theorize one thing that entails individuals with out talking and listening to the people who find themselves a part of that phenomenon, you’re going to be lacking one thing.”

Barone stated that when he discovered he had been named a Rhodes Scholar, all he may do was begin “respiratory closely.”

“I didn’t cry till I known as my dad and mom,” Barone recalled. “Then I cried. Then I needed to get it collectively to speak to the judges afterward.”

The Currier Home resident, who hopes to pursue journalism sooner or later, is co-chair for the editorial board at The Crimson. Their protection gained first place for editorial writing in collegiate journalism within the Society of Skilled Journalists’ 2023 Mark of Excellence Awards.

“I’ve had the distinctive problem, but in addition the actually academic, enriching expertise, of being tasked with bringing individuals collectively to have troublesome discussions in one of the vital difficult years on campus in many years,” stated Barone, who plans to check historical past at Oxford. “I’ve had the privilege to publish a extremely broad variety of views on a variety of essential points on campus.”

Sofia Corona

Miami, Florida, and Pereira, Colombia

Focus: Utilized arithmetic and economics, secondary in authorities

From watching her mom commute a number of hours a day for work in Maryland to biking all through her group, Sofia Corona discovered early on that how individuals transfer is key to the human expertise.

Serving to individuals get the place they should go — inside cities, cities, and programs that profit all — has grow to be her life’s work. “I’m interested by how communities are engaged in infrastructure planning, particularly when the advantages of that infrastructure are collective and widespread, however the burdens are localized,” stated Corona, a Currier Home resident graduating in December.

Corona, who hopes to work within the transportation sector, thinks seismic shifts towards sustainable modes of transportation are attainable. “On the similar time, our transportation networks are sometimes superimposed on inherited, segregated landscapes, each racially and socioeconomically,” she stated. “We are able to’t be agnostic to that.”

At Oxford, Corona’s grasp’s coursework will contextualize mobility programs inside broader financial growth and sustainability frameworks. At Harvard, she labored within the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, conducting analysis on inclusive decision-making in renewable power tasks. She additionally hung out within the MIT Transit Lab. Her skilled expertise consists of internships at Uber, BMW, the U.S. Division of Transportation, and McKinsey & Co.

Her pursuits have taken her all around the world, from engaged on carbon dioxide pricing for the Chilean Ministry of Finance to collaborating with researchers on the Technical College of Munich on a instrument that advises native transit companies.

The Colombian American was a walk-on on Harvard’s varsity crusing staff and is an avid mountaineer with the summits of Denali and Kilimanjaro amongst her feats, and he or she has run the Boston, New York, and Berlin marathons. Amongst her most cherished moments at Harvard have been as a dog-walker to Currier Home canine Huckleberry and Ari.

Aneesh Muppidi

Schenectady, New York

Focus: Pc science and neuroscience, concurrent grasp’s in laptop science

Ready in a room with different Rhodes Scholar finalists, Aneesh Muppidi did a homework drawback set and chatted about South Asian politics, having already made peace with not profitable.

“In my head I assumed, ‘This has been an incredible course of, however now it’s time to return to the actual world,’” the Lowell Home resident stated.

Then, he heard his identify.

“I known as my little brother first,” he stated, adopted by his dad and mom and two finest associates.

Muppidi has hung out mulling the query Alan Turing famously posed in 1950: Can machines assume? He’s come to imagine that understanding human intelligence — and computationally scaling up that intelligence — can clear up among the world’s largest issues, resembling diagnosing advanced medical situations or giving customized tutors to each little one in each classroom.

At Harvard, he’s immersed himself within the energy and promise of synthetic intelligence by tasks on deep reinforcement studying in Assistant Professor Heng Yang’s Computational Robotics Lab; particle filter machine studying algorithms with the Fiete Lab at MIT; and autonomous agent detection with Professor Sam Gershman’s Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab.

Outdoors the lab, Muppidi is equally enthusiastic about AI coverage and ethics. Guaranteeing applied sciences are developed safely is a cornerstone of Muppidi’s analysis, which he plans to proceed whereas pursuing grasp’s coursework in laptop science and public coverage at Oxford.

Muppidi served as president of Harvard Dharma and as president of the Harvard Computational Neuroscience Undergraduate Society. He consists of amongst his mentors Sanskrit teacher Nell Shapiro Hawley, now at Vassar School, with whom he took two years of the traditional language of India. “How she taught had a really lovely impact on my life, within the sense that I used to be capable of get nearer to my non secular identification, who I’m as an individual, and what I imagine in.”

Ayush Noori

Bellevue, Washington

Focus: Pc science and neuroscience, concurrent grasp’s in laptop science

When Ayush Noori was 7, his grandmother, Munira Brooks, was recognized with progressive supranuclear palsy, a uncommon neurodegenerative illness that slowly robbed her of the flexibility to talk, transfer, or breathe. Aiding in her care and witnessing her lengthy battle impressed Noori to pursue science and medication. “My mission is to offer individuals with neurological illness extra time with their family members,” stated Noori.

Noori has championed this mission for practically a decade. For the reason that age of 12, working or volunteering in varied labs, he has carried out analysis on the intersection of neuroscience, synthetic intelligence, and precision medication, in search of to develop new AI-enabled diagnostic and therapy choices for sufferers with neurological issues.

As an undergraduate, Noori has authored 25 peer-reviewed publications — together with seven as first creator — in scientific journals together with Cell, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Getting older, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, and NBD, and his work has been featured at greater than a dozen worldwide conferences. He has been suggested by professors together with Marinka Zitnik at Harvard Medical Faculty; George Church on the Wyss Institute for Biologically Impressed Supplies; and Sudeshna Das, Alberto Serrano-Pozo, and Bradley T. Hyman within the Division of Neurology at Massachusetts Normal Hospital. He plans to do graduate examine in medical neurosciences at Oxford subsequent 12 months.

The recipient of greater than a dozen fellowships at Harvard and a Roberts Household Fellow at Harvard Enterprise Faculty, the Goldwater Scholar and Adams Home resident can be dedicated to instructing and mentorship as co-founder of the Harvard Undergraduate OpenBio Laboratory and as a peer adviser at Harvard School.

“I’ve an immense debt of gratitude towards Harvard as a result of I’ve studied and educated right here since I used to be a teen,” he stated. “The School, SEAS, MGH, and Harvard Medical Faculty have enabled me to contribute to the worldwide combat in opposition to neurological illness and given me hope for a more healthy future, for my family members, and for the world.”

Laura Wegner

Walsrode, Germany

Focus: Economics, secondary in laptop science

Laura Wegner, Currier Home resident and Germany Rhodes Scholarship recipient, desires to handle sufferers’ fragmented medical information and revolutionize healthcare know-how to enhance affected person outcomes.

It’s a trigger pushed by private expertise. Whereas in highschool, Wegner, previously a aggressive swimmer, needed to endure surgical procedure for a knee damage. Docs used the “flawed surgical methodology,” Wegner stated, because of not gaining access to her full medical historical past, together with details about a pre-existing well being situation, leaving her unable to proceed swimming.

“That was a private expertise the place I assumed, ‘Wow, elements of my affected person knowledge are saved in so many various locations, and I want they had been collectively by some means.’”

To enhance experiences for future sufferers, Wegner co-founded the startup Mii in 2022, a affected person healthcare passport that securely shops affected person knowledge so sufferers can deliver their medical historical past from physician to physician, all over the world.

Wegner has taken Harvard programs in well being economics, privateness and know-how, and entrepreneurship, and has labored as a fellow with the Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship. Looking forward to world views, Wegner has studied digital healthcare programs within the U.S., Germany, and Australia, and he or she is writing her thesis on programs in Estonia and Lithuania.

Wanting ahead to enhancing her technical abilities at Oxford with the hope of constant her work in healthcare know-how, Wegner says she loves each the artistic and technical sides of entrepreneurship.

“It’s nearly having an thought after which instantly having the ability to construct a prototype, try it out, and see the place it goes. It’s an incredible alternative to deliver any thought to life, and hopefully have it enhance individuals’s lives.”