UCLA, Harvard, Georgetown, MIT Students Win Marshall Scholarship

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC  – Five students are among 51 winners of the prestigious 2024 Marshall Scholarship, which selects American scholars to pursue their graduate education at any university in the UK.

“I am so proud that this year’s set of Marshall Scholars represents the diversity and richness of our region,” said Emma Wade Smith, Trade Commissioner for North America and British Consul General in New York, announcing the scholarships.

Arushi Avachat studying English and Political Science with a minor in South Asian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of ‘Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment,’ a young adult novel released in January 2024. She is on contract for a second novel, which she is currently drafting as her English honors thesis. Outside of publishing, Arushi has organized voter registration, gun control walkouts, and her local Women’s Marches, and she represented California in the 2020 U.S. Senate Youth Program.

Simar Bajaj, from Fremont, CA, is currently completing BAs in Chemistry and in the History of Science at Harvard University, where he was elected as junior Phi Beta Kappa. He has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles in medical journals and over 50 news articles in a wide-range of publications including The Atlantic, Time Magazine, and The Guardian. He is the youngest recipient of the Foreign Press Association Award for Science Story of the Year and the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. He is currently a volunteer with the American Lung Cancer Screening Initiative, as well as a research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Anushree Chaudhuri, from San Diego, CA, is studying Urban Studies and Planning as well as Economics towards a combined SB and Masters in City Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy, the World Wildlife Fund, and an ESG investing start-up, as well as with several climate and sustainability-focused groups at MIT to advance climate research and policies. As an intern with the U.S. Department of Energy, she developed a web application to identify buildings most in need of investment in historically disadvantaged communities. She has worked with MIT’s Science Impact Collaborative to study local community responses to large-scale renewable energy projects, and she represented MIT as an undergraduate delegate to the United Nations COP27 in 2022. As a Marshall Scholar, Anushree will pursue a MPhil/PhD in Environmental Policy and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Hari Choudhari spent most of his childhood in Bangalore, and is currently studying International Politics with minors in History and German at Georgetown University. He has been involved in multiple internships over the course of his college career, including the Center for Cross-Border Studies in Northern Ireland and the Meridian International Center. He is currently a Virtual Student Federal Service intern with the Political Section at the U.S. Consulate-General in Munich, Germany and will be interning in Congress with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs next semester. His research on German security policy was published by the American-German Institute. As a Marshall Scholar, he will study Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s University Belfast, followed by an MSc in Global Leadership and Peacebuilding at King’s College London.

Sarosh Nagar of Northbrook, IL is a senior at Harvard where he has a perfect record and is dual-concentrating in chemistry and economics with a minor in government. He has amassed an extraordinary record of publication and policy papers, including over 10 peer-reviewed papers as an undergraduate research affiliate at Harvard’s Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and the Law where his work was cited to inform a WHO treaty and in Congressional hearings regarding drug pricing. His non peer-reviewed work has been published in Newsweek and The Hill. He interned in the CDC’s Global Health Center, served as a Critical and Emerging Technologies Intern at the Office of the Science and Technology Advisor with the US State Department, was a fellow in the Science Policy & Regulation Programme within NICE in the UK, and served as an intern in the Office of Regulatory Affairs at the FDA. He is the co-founder and president of Harvard’s Emerging Technology Group and developed numerous governmental, international and academic collaborations, including presenting before the White House, among many other campus activities and volunteer efforts.

Among this year’s Marshall Scholarship class are aspiring diplomats, doctors, fighter pilots, and scientists.

With over 2,200 scholarships awarded to date, the program began in 1953 as a gesture of gratitude to the people of the US for the assistance that the UK received after World War II under the Marshall Plan.