Twenty-six sophomores and juniors have been selected as 2001 Burchard Scholars in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
The awards, named after the School's first dean, John Ely Burchard, are given to students who demonstrate unusual abilities and academic excellence in the areas embraced by the School. The students selected in the 15th year of competition for the awards "are from exciting and diverse backgrounds and are a remarkable group of gifted young scholars," said Dean Philip S. Khoury, co-founder of the Burchard Program and chair of the selection committee.
The Burchard Scholars and a rotating group of faculty will be invited to a series of dinners beginning this month, at which an MIT faculty member or visiting scholar will present work in progress, followed by a discussion. This will allow students and faculty members to mix and will give students an opportunity to engage in the kind of intellectual exchange that characterizes scholarship in the humanities, arts and social sciences. The emphasis throughout the program will be interdisciplinary.
In addition to Dean Khoury, the selection committee consisted of Professors Margery Resnick of foreign languages and literatures, John Hildebidle and Mary C. Fuller of literature, Charles Stewart III OF political science and Lowell Lindgren of music and theater arts.
The Burchard Scholars are as follows.
Juniors: Rima Arnaout, Jenny Lee, Jenny Lin, Kris Schnee and Jennifer Son in biology; Mendel Chuang in economics and management; Daniel Feldman in environmental engineering; Melissa Edoh in political science; Remi Fujii, Eugene Hasha and Leah Schmelzer in mathematics; Julie Hong and Kaitya Vadgama in chemical engineering; Radha Iyengar Alice Takhtajan and Daniel Tortorice in economics; Jimmy Jia in mathematics and materials science and engineering; Joyce Lee in literature; Toh Ne Win in management and computer science; Kathryn Nichols in brain and cognitive sciences; Karen Robinson in electrical engineering; Michael Vogel in management and electrical engineering; and Siobhan Walsh in chemistry and literature.
Sophomores: David Foxe in architecture, Lynn Punnoose in biology and Vikram Maheshri in economics and mathematics.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 7, 2001.
