Eleven recent Yale graduates, including 10 members of the Yale College Class of 2025, have been awarded fellowships from various organizations for graduate study in the United Kingdom.
The fellowship winners and their awards follow:
Olivia Lombardo ’25, who graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in political science (intensive) from Yale, was awarded a Paul Mellon Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. degree in criminology at the University of Cambridge. Her senior essay, advised by Andrea Aldrich, of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, explored the role of race, poverty, and place in housing cases in New York City, with a focus on what drives nonappearance in court (when a tenant does not show up to court). During her time at Yale, Lombardo served in several roles on the Yale College Council, worked as a research assistant for the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School, was a Dwight Hall Urban Fellow, and was co-director of the newly founded Yale-Student Association for Small Claims Assistance (Y-SASCA), which provides legal information to Connecticut residents. Outside of Yale, she has interned with the U.S. Senate, as a Women in Government Fellow and as a Joe Rose ’81 Government Service Fellow; the Federal Public Defender in New Haven; and the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, as a Cahoon Fellow in Public Service. At Cambridge, she will combine her interest in the civil and criminal legal systems to explore how U.K. legal services models could enhance access to justice in the U.S. context.
Hannah Barrios ’25, from Tampa, Florida, majored in philosophy at Yale. Her interests lie in connecting philosophical tools and research with social policy debates. During the upcoming academic year, she will complete her M.Phil. in philosophy as a Fox Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Her master’s thesis will focus on social media content moderation (the process in which social media platforms decide which pieces of content are made visible to users and which are removed). Specifically, she will study the extent to which content moderation boards can be directly likened to state governments, and how that affects the ethics of content moderation. At Yale, Barrios served as a first-year counselor (froco) in Benjamin Franklin College, chair of the Independent Party, and a member of the Yale Buddhist Student Community. Over her summers, she interned at the Center for Democracy & Technology, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and her state representative’s office, and served as a teaching assistant for the Citizens Thinkers Writers program at Yale. In the future, she hopes to work at the intersection of academic philosophy, and public policy.
Simona Hausleitner ’25, who is a recipient of the Rotary Global Grant Scholarship, will pursue an M.Phil. degree in population health sciences at the University of Cambridge. She graduated from Yale this spring with a major in neuroscience and earned certificates in global health and human rights through the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and Yale Law School, respectively. In her capstone research, she examined infringements on informed consent and genetic sovereignty in the Havasupai tribe of northern Arizona, and also authored a policy brief on PEPFAR reauthorization and global HIV/AIDS strategy. As president of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), Hausleitner led efforts to democratize access to pharmaceuticals through transparent patent licensing, while also volunteering in the reproductive health and education departments at the HAVEN Free Clinic. She also worked with New Haven’s refugee and immigrant youth, teaching math and English in under-resourced public schools. Her research in Alzheimer’s disease spans from lab-based investigations of tau protein pathology (abnormal accumulation and aggregation of tau protein) in mice models to applied work at a neurotech startup that leverages vocal biomarkers to preempt cognitive decline. At Cambridge and beyond, Hausleitner aims to advance cross-border health governance and design anticipatory, equity-driven interventions for noncommunicable diseases — particularly those perpetuated by structural disenfranchisement and neglected by current global health architecture.
Lucía Amaya Martínez ’25, a history major who also earned a human rights certificate at Yale College, was awarded the Henry Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. degree in development studies at University of Cambridge. At Yale, Amaya Martínez studied the intersection of arts and human rights through the lens of memory initiatives in post-conflict societies. She has worked with memory and human rights organizations in México, Bosnia, and Argentina. Having grown up in Bogotá, Colombia, she has volunteered with her country’s Truth Commission and Special Jurisdiction for Peace. These experiences informed her senior thesis: an intellectual history of the Colombian conflict that sought to expand the epistemological power afforded to victims’ testimonies in the understanding of conflict and post-conflict societies. At Yale, she worked as a project coordinator for the Communication and Consent Educators, where she led intersectional interventions to prevent sexual harm on campus. Interested in how cultures of sustainable development can arise and contribute to peace building in conflict-torn societies, Amaya Martinez’s interdisciplinary M.Phil. research will focus on how localized development plans can be expanded through the consideration of capability approaches and human rights frameworks. By exploring alternative ways to think about harm in underdeveloped regions, she hopes to bridge the gap between the prevention potential of development studies and the response mechanisms present in human rights.
Jenesis Nwainokpor ’25, who graduated from Yale with a bachelor of arts degree in the history of science, medicine, and public health, was awarded a Paul Mellon fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. in health, medicine, and society at the University of Cambridge. At Yale, her academic interests included the history of government regulation of midwifery. In her senior thesis project, Nwainokpor examined how the growing use of vital statistics undergirded regulatory movements against Black midwives in her home state of North Carolina throughout the 20th century. At Cambridge, she intends to expand upon this research by examining the experiences of midwives of the Windrush generation during the early years of the National Health Service. As a student at Yale, she served as a captain on Yale’s Undergraduate Moot Court team and the Yale Mock Trial Association, and as president of Morse College Council, in addition to working at the Yale University Art Gallery. Outside of Yale, she interned with the State Archives of North Carolina’s Special Collections Unit.
Calista Krass ’25 was awarded a Clarendon Scholarship to pursue a D.Phil. degree in engineering science at the University of Oxford, where she will research mixed matrix membranes for carbon capture. At Yale, she majored in chemical engineering and conducted research in the Computational Soft Matter Group. Committed to advancing diversity and inclusion in STEM, she held several teaching and mentoring roles during her time at Yale. She served as an organic chemistry peer tutor, a STARS I Program peer mentor, and a STEM Navigators and Academic Strategies Peer Mentor at the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. Her academic and professional interests focus on utilizing engineering solutions to address sustainability challenges in heavy and hard-to-abate industries, with an emphasis on integrating technical innovation and policy. She ultimately hopes to contribute to science-driven policymaking at international research and advisory organizations, where she can help shape evidence-based strategies for a more sustainable future as a technical advisor or policy analyst.
Maheen Iqbal ’25, who majored in political science at Yale, was awarded a Rotary Global Grant Scholarship to pursue an M.Sc. degree in refugee and forced migration studies at the University of Oxford. At the Oxford Refugee Studies Centre, she plans to examine how state actors in the Global South respond to displacement, with a particular focus on the intersections of migration, development, and post-colonial governance. At Yale, Iqbal was also a student in the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. Her research project, based in Marrakech, Morocco, explored South-South migration and local governance models for post-conflict refugee reception and economic development. She previously served as co-president of the Migration Alliance at Yale, executive director of the Yale International Relations Leadership Institute, and a Yale President’s Public Service Fellow. Originally from Ontario, Canada, she hopes to shape inclusive migration policies at the intersection of international law and global governance, with a focus on strengthening multilateral responses to displacement in the Global South.
Keerthana Chari ’25, who graduated from Yale with a B.S. in environmental engineering and a certificate of advanced study in Italian, was awarded a Paul Mellon Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. degree in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. As a Yale Climate Technologies Fellow, her senior thesis — conducted in the laboratory of Drew Gentner, an associate professor at Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science — explored the unique and complex atmospheric chemistry of non-urban air quality along the coast of Connecticut. Chari has also conducted research on protein-lipid interactions as an assistant under Kallol Gupta, an assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine (YSM). In 2024, she interned in the Department of Scientific Research at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, studying paper degradation mechanisms. At Cambridge, she plans to study the historical development of scientific analysis in museums and how scientific tools have been used to examine material culture more broadly. She has also worked on the translation of Italian speculative fiction with Deborah Pellegrino, in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for which she was a recipient of the Department of Italian Studies’ 2024 Undergraduate Research Prize. Chari was also a student guide at the Yale Center for British Art and a violinist in the Davenport Pops Orchestra. She hopes to draw attention to the critical role of science in museums and illuminate hidden voices in stories about science.
Tony Potchernikov ’24, who earned a B.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale, has been awarded a CRUK and Cambridge Trust funding to pursue a joint M.Res. and Ph.D. program in cancer biology at the University of Cambridge. Specifically, he will study the molecular mechanisms underlying how cancer cells hijack cytoskeletal machinery to enable cancer cell invasion and metastasis. During his time at Yale, Potchernikov was a Hahn Research Scholar in the lab of Enrique De La Cruz, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at YSM, where he contributed to projects investigating the biochemistry of cytoskeletal regulatory protein cofilin, which is currently published in Nature Communications, and the kinetics of an enzyme biologic that is under development for treating deadly calcification disorders. He also took various mentorship roles as a first-year counselor in Saybrook College, an Academic Strategies Peer Mentor, and an Undergraduate Learning Assistant. For his excellence in scholarship, research, and mentorship, he was awarded the Paul M. Sigler Memorial Prize and the Yale Science and Engineering Association Senior of Distinction Award. He is currently a Postbaccalaureate Research Fellow at the National Institutes of Health, where he is interrogating how motor proteins contribute to cytoskeletal dynamics and enable cell migration.
Tyus Sheriff ’25, who double majored in classics and political science at Yale, was awarded the King’s-Yale Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. in political thought and intellectual history at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include ancient and early modern political thought, legal history, classical reception studies, and the politics of translation. At Yale, he completed two senior theses: one on inheritance and education in Plato’s Republic, which received the Jacob Cooper Prize, and another on Thomas Hobbes’s translation of Thucydides, which received the Philo Sherman Bennett Prize. His academic writing has also received the Elizabethan Club Essay Prize and the John Hubbard Curtis Prize. Beyond the classroom, he served as a board member for the Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project, volunteered at New Haven Reads, and worked as a residential teaching assistant for Yale’s Citizens Thinkers Writers program.
Michaela Wang ’25, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in anthropology, an intensive certificate in education studies, and a certificate in ethnography, was awarded the Paul Mellon Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. degree in land economy research at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the mobilities of Indigenous communities and communities of color as they shape and are shaped by public lands policy. Her two theses, one of which won the Edward Sapir Prize, examined trails as Indigenous culture-based classrooms and platforms for self-determination on Hawaiʻi Island. At Cambridge, she will extend her mobilities research to study “right to roam” access policies in the United Kingdom. At Yale, Wang has led her own mobile journeys as a First-Year Outdoor Orientation Trips leader and co-led the Taiwanese American Society, Yale Undergraduate Anthropology Collective, and Yale Chi Alpha Christian Ministry. She has also interned for U.S. National Historic Trails in Hawaiʻi and Southern Virginiaas a trail interpreter. In the U.K., she looks forward to day-long rambles across the countryside — fueled by baked beans and Battenberg cake.
