Two students—one Trinity senior and one medical student—have won Marshall Scholarships, which pay for two years of graduate study in the United Kingdom.
Emily Heikamp, a biology major, and Alexander Oshmyansky, a second-year medical student, will both study at Oxford University.
The prestigious Marshal Scholarship is awarded by the British government to at least 40 U.S. citizens a year and is worth about $60,000 over two years. Scholars can study any subject at a university in the United Kingdom.
Oshmyansky admitted he had never been to England, and he joked about the differences in culture. “I’ve seen TV shows with British people on them,” he said. “They seem a little odd.”
Oshmyansky, who is from Littleton, Colo., plans to study computational neuroscience and earn a degree in mathematics. Because Duke medical school students devote their third year to a scholarly research project, Oshmyansky will only have to take one year off from medical school.
He earned an undergraduate degree in biochemistry after just one year at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he received the Boettcher Scholarship, the most prestigious merit-based scholarship available to graduating high school seniors in Colorado. The University of Colorado nominated Oshmyansky for the Marshall Scholarship.
Heikamp, who is from Metairie, La., plans to study the molecular processes of angiogenesis, the process by which tumors produce the blood vessels they need to grow. She has also done research in molecular immunology at Duke and at Cambridge University.
She said the collaborative nature of British scholarship made the Marshall award particularly appealing. Heikamp noted daily breaks for tea as central to the discussions about research.
“So many discoveries are made by serendipity, and you may not see the problem from a different angle,” she said. “It’s mostly about communicating ideas and talking about your work.”
Heikamp has also received the Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholarship, the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and the Faculty Scholar Award, but she said she was stunned to learn that she was also a Marshall Scholar. “When I walked out of my interview, I felt like it was good, but there were so many amazing people there I thought there was no way I was going to get it,” she said.
The Marshall Scholars program counts New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and former Duke President Nan Keohane among its alumni.
The program was established by an act of the British Parliament in 1953 and named for former U.S. Secretary of State John Marshall. Scholars are considered potential leaders and decision-makers.
With Oshmyansky and Heikamp, six Duke students have won Marshall Scholarships since 1994. Except for Oshmyansky, they have all been A.B. Duke scholars, and this is the first year Duke has had two winners.
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