In addition to the students previously announced in YaleNews as winners of Rhodes and Gates-Cambridge (and more here) scholarships, the following graduating students have received fellowships or scholarships to study at Oxford and Cambridge universities.
Jude Alawa
Jude Alawa, a Global Health Scholar majoring in global affairs and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, has been awarded the Rotary Global Grant and the Fox International Fellowship to earn his M.Phil. in public health at Cambridge University.
Alawa is from Miami, Florida by way of Damascus, Syria and is interested in the intersection between medicine and public policy, specifically with respect to humanitarian assistance and access to healthcare among marginalized populations. He has worked for the National Health Service in London evaluating and implementing new models of community healthcare, for the Council on Foreign Relations researching domestic and global health policy, and for Pharos Global Health devising appropriate interventions to address international health disparities. Alawa’s current work focuses on providing water purification devices to Syrian refugee camps and addressing interventions to improve chronic disease care among refugees. In the future, he hopes to study and craft effective measures to improve clinical standards and increase access to healthcare in under-resourced communities at home and abroad. At Yale, Alawa is active in the Yale Rotaract Club, the Yale International Relations Association, Instrumental Connection, and as a research assistant at the Yale Medical School. He plans eventually to attend medical school.
Leland Stange
Leland Stange, who is majoring in both the humanities and philosophy, has been awarded the Paul Mellon Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. in political thought and intellectual history at Cambridge University.
After earning his M.A., Stange, who is from Tulsa, Oklahoma, plans to pursue a Ph.D. in politics. He hopes to build on his senior essay in humanities, which argues that Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” can be read as a methodological criticism of empirical political science. Last summer, he tested Tocqueville’s method of conducting political theory in Taiwan, where he discovered a rift between American and Taiwanese understandings of liberty. He would love to keep pursuing his “Democracy in –“ project across continental Europe and the United Kingdom. At Yale, he was a staff columnist at the Yale Daily News, a WYBC radio disc jockey, and a tour guide and research assistant at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Daphne Martin
Daphne Martin is a classics and history of art major who has been awarded the Paul Mellon Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. in classics at Cambridge University, focusing primarily on the art and archaeology of archaic Sparta.
Martin has spent every summer of her life in Greece, where her mother is from, surrounded by archaeological sites and antiquities. She has interned at the Museum of Cycladic Art and the Acropolis Museum, as well as worked on various archaeological digs around Greece. At Yale, she has worked extensively as a curatorial intern at the Yale University Art Gallery. She is the founder and director of the “Embracing Our Monuments in Sparta” Initiative, a project supported by Yale Classics and Yale Hellenic Studies aimed at reviving Sparta’s cultural heritage. She has presented her research at two international conferences. Her senior thesis, “Meeting the Lakonian Gaze,” was awarded the Alice Derby Lang Prize.
Kelly Fu
Kelly Fu, who has been awarded a Henry Fellowship, will pursue an M.Phil. in early modern history at Cambridge, researching early maritime connections between Britain and East Asia through a micro-historical lens.
Throughout her study of history at Yale, her research has explored the global connections of the British Empire, from Barbados to Hong Kong. In addition to working as a research assistant for one of her professors, she has also served as a Bartels research fellow, a student curator, and a member of the student acquisitions committee at the Yale Center for British Art. In her spare time, Fu heads the Yale Center for British Art’s student guides program, sings in the Yale Slavic Chorus, and tutors French at the Center for Language Study.
Clara Ma
Clara Ma has been awarded the Churchill Scholarship in science policy, chosen on the basis of high academic achievement both in STEM and in the social sciences. At Cambridge, she will complete a Master’s in Public Policy degree with a concentration in climate, energy, and maritime policy.
At Yale, Ma is majoring in geology and geophysics and political science. An Energy Studies Scholar, her undergraduate research employs global climate modeling in the study of air quality, climate change, and aerosol-climate interactions. Her senior essay assessing the potential for Sino-U.S. cooperation to address climate change in the Arctic received the James Gordon Bennett prize for the best senior essay in international relations. Ma was the co-president of Yale Women in STEM and taught an after-school science class at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. She was also awarded a Schwarzman Scholarship, but has declined in order to pursue study at Cambridge.
Sara Speller
Sara Speller has been awarded the Angela Fu Scholarship to pursue an M.Phil. in music (musicology) in St. John’s College at Oxford University.
Speller, who originally is from North Carolina but currently lives in Ohio, is majoring in music at Yale. During her time on campus she has been a first-year counselor, a Head of College aide, and an active member of the Yale Glee Club from fall 2015 to fall 2018. She was also a member of the Opera Theatre of Yale College and the Yale Baroque Opera Project, and she participated in the Shen Curriculum for Musical Theater. Speller worked as a teaching artist for the Yale School of Music’s Music In Schools Initiative, peer tutored within the music department, and spent one summer as a counselor for Camp Kesem. She is a classically trained singer who performs both opera and musical theater. Speller’s academic interests lie within music and performance, chiefly concerning race, gender, and art music in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Andrew Siaw-Asamoah
Andrew Siaw-Asamoah has received a Paul Mellon Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. in epidemiology at Cambridge University.
Siaw-Asamoah, who hails from Buffalo, New York, is studying applied mathematics, with a concentration in mathematical biology and chemistry. His senior project was in liquid phase modeling. In his research, Siaw-Asamoah has spent time applying data analysis tactics to uncover oncogenic mechanisms. He is a co-founder of HOSIKIDS, a nonprofit organization created in memory of his grandmother that improves quality and access to education of children in Bawaleshie, Ghana.
Hallie Gaitsch
Gaitsch will be matriculating to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) M.D.-Ph.D. Partnership Program as an Oxford-Cambridge Scholar next year, in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Medical Scientist Training Program. After completing two years of medical school at Johns Hopkins, she will begin her graduate training in 2021 and plans to pursue a D.Phil. in biomedical sciences at the University of Oxford, co-mentored by an investigator at the NIH. She hopes to focus her research on the mechanisms underlying neuroinfectious and neurodegenerative diseases. After completing her graduate degree, she will return to the United States to complete her M.D. Her medical and scientific graduate training will be fully funded by the program.
Originally from Batavia, Illinois, Gaitsch will graduate this spring with a B.S. (Intensive) in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology (MCDB). During college, she has been involved in research projects at a variety of institutions, including the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, University of Chicago Conte Center for Computational Neuropsychiatric Genomics, University of Cambridge, and Yale School of Medicine (working in the Fikrig and Arnsten labs). She has co-authored six peer-reviewed scientific publications in the fields of astrophysics, neuroscience, and virology. She served as an emergency medical technician for Yale Emergency Medical Services, a peer tutor in the chemistry and MCDB departments, a volunteer with Yale Alzheimer’s Buddies, and a violist in a chamber music ensemble. She plans to pursue a career involving the practice of clinical medicine, scientific research, and teaching.
