This year, many Bowdoin seniors, and a few recent alumni, were awarded some of the country’s most prestigious national fellowships and grants, helping them launch careers in academia, public service, medicine and more.
Will Ossoff ’15, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Junior Fellowship
Each year, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace selects 10-12 graduating seniors, from colleges and universities around the country, to work for one year as research assistants to the endowment’s senior associates. Ossoff, of Andover, Mass., will work with Carnegie’s nuclear policy program.
Scott Mitchell ’15, Davis Projects for Peace Grant
Mitchell is a dual degree student and has been studying biochemistry and biomedical engineering at Bowdoin College and Dartmouth College. With his start-up nonprofit, Stand With Me, Mitchell is manufacturing and distributing low-cost standers for disabled children in developing countries.
Bill De La Rosa ’15, Truman Scholarship and John Lewis Fellowship
A sociology and Latin American studies double major, De La Rosa is passionate about immigrant rights and has conducted grant-funded research on the effects of border security on undocumented migration. He is the student coordinator for the Maine Volunteer Lawyers Project, a member of the national State Farm Youth Advisory Board, and a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Bill hopes to use his Truman Scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology and social policy and to advocate for people struggling in our immigration system.
Linda Kinstler ’13, Marshall Scholarship
Linda Kinstler ’13, Marshall ScholarshipAn English major, Kinstler is currently a contributing editor at Politico, based in Brussels. She has been a Google journalism fellow and National Press Foundation Washington Reporting Fellow. After graduating, she was a reporter and editor at The New Republic, where she covered the crisis in Ukraine. As a Marshall Scholar, Kinstler will study nationalism in Eastern Europe in the University of Cambridge’s European Literature and Cultures program.
Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Fellows
Hannah Arrighi ’15, Teresa Liu ’15, Anna Nutter ’11, Jenny Goetz ’15, Sophie Matuszewicz ’15, Cailey Oehler ’15, Caitlin Greenwood ’15, Clare McLaughlin ’15, Brandon Ouellette ’15, Mariya Ilyas ’13, Andrea Noble ’15, Elias Peirce ’15. Read more about them here.
Fulbright Research Fellows
Luke Drabyn ’15, Margaret Lindeman ’15, Jaepil Yoon ’15, Ian Kline ’15. Read more about them here.
Mariya Ilyas ’13, Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Graduate Fellowship
Mariya Ilyas is one of 20 people from around the country who has been awarded a 2015 Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship. Graduate fellows receive financial support toward a two-year, full-time master’s degree program in a field related to international affairs and diplomacy. The fellowship program is designed to develop a group of people whose academic backgrounds fulfill the needs of the U.S. State Department.
Phui Yi Kong ’15, Watson Fellowship
Since arriving to the United States in 2011 from her home in Malaysia, Kong has used theater to create community solidarity. She has facilitated theater workshops for several groups including Occupy Maine activists, Maine All Care physicians, and Malaysian high school students. In August, Kong will embark on a yearlong fellowship to travel to Japan, Sri Lanka, Italy and Brazil to study martial arts and physical theater’s ability to awaken civic responsibility.
Kevin MacKenzie ’15, Critical Language Scholarship
Kevin MacKenzie ’15, Critical Language ScholarshipAn economics major and Chinese minor from Florida, Kevin will be studying Chinese in Dalian, China.
Melissa Haskell ’13, Gabriela Serrato Marks ’15 and Van Nhat Tra ’13: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships
Melissa Haskell ’13, Gabriela Serrato Marks ’15 and Van Nhat Tra ’13: National Science Foundation Graduate Research FellowshipsAs a Ph.D. student in the Harvard University Biophysics program, Haskell will use her NSF Fellowship to support her research on developing numerical methods to correct for motion artifacts in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Serrato Marks’s NSF Fellowship will support her research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution joint program in oceanography as she works toward a Ph.D. in Marine Geology. Van, a Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is working in organic synthesis and chemical biology.
Margaret Bryan ’15, Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme
A double-major in art history and French, Bryan will travel to Tenryū village in the mountainous Nagano Prefecture of Japan to work as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) on the Japan Exchange & Teaching Program. She would like to eventually pursue a graduate degree in Japanese Art.
Kendall Carpenter ’15, Princeton in Africa Fellowship
With a major in neuroscience and a minor in English, Carpenter’s interest in public health and her experience studying abroad in Cape Town drew her to the Princeton in Africa program. As a fellow for Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative in Gaborone, Botswana, she will combine her interests in medicine and children.
Claudia Villar-Leeman ’15, Princeton in Latin America Fellowship
A biology major and Spanish minor from New York, Villar-Leeman will be returning to South America through Princeton in Latin America, drawing upon previous experiences studying in Quito, Ecuador, as a junior.
Emily King ’15, Goldwater Scholarship, Honorable Mention
King is a biochemistry major, and is interested in obtaining a Ph.D. in molecular biology to study cancer. In the summer of 2014, she worked in a research lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, testing chemotherapy drugs for treating multiple myeloma. Previously she worked at the National Institute of Health and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, researching cancer therapies and cancer genetics.
