MIT senior Katie Spivakovsky has been selected as a 2026-27 Churchill Scholar and will undertake an MPhil in biological sciences at the Wellcome Sanger Institute at Cambridge University in the U.K. this fall.

Spivakovsky, who is double-majoring in biological engineering and artificial intelligence, with minors in mathematics and biology, aims to integrate computation and bioengineering in an academic research career focused on developing robust, scalable solutions that promote equitable health outcomes.

At MIT’s Bathe BioNanoLab, Spivakovsky investigates therapeutic applications of DNA origami, DNA-scaffolded nanoparticles for gene and mRNA delivery, and co-authored a manuscript in press at Science. She leads the development of an immune therapy for cancer cachexia with a team supported by MIT’s BioMakerSpace; this work earned a silver medal at the international synthetic biology competition iGEM and was published in the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal. Previously, she worked on Merck’s Modeling & Informatics team, characterizing a cancer-associated protein mutation, and at the New York Structural Biology Center, where she improved cryogenic electron microscopy particle detection models.

On campus, Spivakovsky serves as director of the Undergraduate Initiative in the MIT Biotech Group. She is deeply committed to teaching and mentoring, and has served as a lecturer and co-director for class 6.S095 (Probability Problem Solving), a teaching assistant for classes 20.309 (Bioinstrumentation) and 20.A06 (Hands-on Making in Biological Engineering), a lab assistant for 6.300 (Signal Processing), and as an associate advisor.

“Katie is a brilliant researcher who has a keen intellectual curiosity that will make her a leader in biological engineering in the future. We are proud that she will be representing MIT at Cambridge University,” says Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships.

The Churchill Scholarship is a highly competitive fellowship that annually offers 16 American students the opportunity to pursue a funded graduate degree in science, mathematics, or engineering at Churchill College within Cambridge University. The scholarship, established in 1963, honors former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s vision for U.S.-U.K. scientific exchange. Since 2017, two Kanders Churchill Scholarships have also been awarded each year for studies in science policy.

MIT students interested in learning more about the Churchill Scholarship should contact Kim Benard in MIT Career Advising and Professional Development.

This CAPD event is open to MIT juniors, seniors, graduate students, and alumni.

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Note: Accommodation requests should be submitted one week in advance of an event. If accommodations are not possible due to the late timing of the request, a team member will reach out to you to discuss alternative resources and/or solutions.

MIT undergraduate Akorfa Dagadu has been named a Schwarzman Scholar and will join the program’s Class of 2026-27 scholars from 40 countries and 83 universities. This year’s 150 Schwarzman Scholars were selected for their leadership potential from a pool of over 5,800 applicants, the highest number in the Schwarzman Scholarship’s 11-year history.

Schwarzman Scholars pursue a one-year, fully funded master’s degree program in global affairs at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, in Beijing, China. The graduate curriculum focuses on the pillars of leadership, global affairs, and China, with additional opportunities for cultural immersion, experiential learning, and professional development. The program aims to build a global network of leaders with a well-rounded understanding of China’s evolving role in the world.

Hailing from Ghana, Dagadu is a senior majoring in chemical-biological engineering. At MIT, she researches how enzyme-polymer systems can be designed to break down plastics at end-of-life, work that has been recognized internationally through publications and awards, including the CellPress Rising Scientist Award.

Dagadu is the founder of Ishara, a venture transforming recycling in Ghana by connecting informal waste pickers to transparent, efficient systems with potential to scale across growth markets. She aspires to establish a materials innovation hub in Africa to address the end-of-life of materials, from plastics to e-waste.

MIT’s Schwarzman Scholar applicants receive guidance and mentorship from the distinguished fellowships team in MIT Career Advising and Professional Development, as well as the Presidential Committee on Distinguished Fellowships. Students and alumni interested in learning more should contact Kimberly Benard, associate dean and director of distinguished fellowships and academic excellence.

This CAPD event is open to undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni.

Please indicate any accommodation needs by completing the following survey: https://airtable.com/shrfsjcovcoDIN0da

Note: Accommodation requests should be submitted one week in advance of an event. If accommodations are not possible due to the late timing of the request, a team member will reach out to you to discuss alternative resources and/or solutions.

In these informal, in-person sessions, you can chat with a visiting Fulbright Scholar or Fulbright Foreign Student currently on campus at MIT, ask questions, and gain insight into the countries highlighted.

MIT’s Fulbright Program Advisor, Julia Mongo (jmongo@mit.edu), will be on hand to explain the Fulbright US Student Program opportunities offered in each country and answer questions on the application process.

We also encourage you to attend one of our general Fulbright Information Sessions on February 12 (Zoom) or March 11 (in-person).

Click on the buttons below to register in Handshake for one or more Explore Fulbright events! You can also register in Handshake for a Fulbright or other Distinguished Fellowships info session.

Explore Fulbright: TURKEY (TÜRKIYE)

Wednesday, February 25, 1-2pm | In-person, 7-103

Featuring Dr. Onur Tümtürk (MIT Senseable City Lab), Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar from Bilkent University, Ankara.

Explore Fulbright: NORWAY

Wednesday, March 18, 1-2pm | In-person, 7-103

Featuring Theodoros Xenakis (applied mathematics graduate student), Fulbright Foreign Student from NTNU, Trondheim.

Explore Fulbright: NEW ZEALAND

Wednesday, April 1, 1-2pm | In-person, 7-103

Featuring Katherine Ellis (Griffith Lab), Fulbright New Zealand Science and Innovation Graduate Award recipient from the University of Canterbury.

Vivian Chinoda ’25, Alice Hall, Sofia Lara, and Sophia Wang ’24 have been selected as 2026 Rhodes Scholars and will begin fully funded postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford in the U.K. next fall. Hall, Lara, and Wang, are U.S. Rhodes Scholars; Chinoda was awarded the Rhodes Zimbabwe Scholarship.

The scholars were supported by Associate Dean Kim Benard and the Distinguished Fellowships team in Career Advising and Professional Development. They received additional mentorship and guidance from the Presidential Committee on Distinguished Fellowships.

“MIT students never cease to amaze us with their creativity, vision, and dedication,” says Professor Taylor Perron, who co-chairs the committee along with Professor Nancy Kanwisher. “This is especially true of this year’s Rhodes scholars. It’s remarkable how they are simultaneously so talented in their respective fields and so adept at communicating their goals to the world. I look forward to seeing how these outstanding young leaders shape the future. It’s an honor to work with such talented students.”

Vivian Chinoda ’25

Vivian Chinoda, from Harare, Zimbabwe, was named a Rhodes Zimbabwe Scholar on Oct. 10. Chinoda graduated this spring with a BS in business analytics. At Oxford, she hopes to pursue the MSc in social data science and a master’s degree in public policy.  Chinoda aims to foster economic development and equitable resource access for Zimbabwean communities by promoting social innovation and evidence-based policy.

At MIT, Chinoda researched the impacts of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation on stakeholders and key indicators, such as innovation, with the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. She supported the Digital Humanities Lab and MIT Ukraine in building a platform to connect and fundraise for exiled Ukrainian scientists. With the MIT Office of Sustainability, Chinoda co-led the plan for a campus transition to a fully electric vehicle fleet, advancing the Institute’s Climate Action Plan.

Chinoda’s professional experience includes roles as a data science and research intern at Adaviv (a controlled-environment agriculture startup) and a product manager at Red Hat, developing AI tools for open-source developers.

Beyond academics, Chinoda served as first-year outreach chair and vice president of the African Students’ Association, where she co-founded the Impact Fund, raising over $30,000 to help members launch social impact initiatives in their countries. She was a scholar in the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) program, studying big-data ethics across sectors like criminal justice and health care, and a PKG social impact internship participant. Chinoda also enjoys fashion design, which she channeled into reviving the MIT Black Theatre Guild, earning her the 2025 Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Award.

Alice Hall

Alice Hall is a senior from Philadelphia studying chemical engineering with a minor in Spanish. At Oxford, she will earn a DPhil in engineering, focusing on scaling sustainable heating and cooling technologies. She is passionate about bridging technology, leadership, and community to address the climate crisis.

Hall’s research journey began in the Lienhard Group, developing computational and techno-economic models of electrodialysis for nutrient reclamation from brackish groundwater. She then worked in the Langer Lab, investigating alveolar-capillary barrier function to enhance lung viability for transplantation. During a summer in Madrid, she collaborated with the European Space Agency to optimize surface treatments for satellite materials.

Hall’s current research in the Olivetti Group, as part of the MIT Climate Project, examines the manufacturing scalability of early-stage clean energy solutions. Hall has gained industry experience through internships with Johnson and Johnson and Procter and Gamble.

Hall represents the student body as president of MIT’s Undergraduate Association. She also serves on the Presidential Advisory Cabinet, the executive boards of the Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Student Advisory Board and MIT’s chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Corporation Joint Advisory Committee, the Compton Lectures Advisory Committee, and the MIT Alumni Association Board of Directors as an invited guest.

She is an active member of the Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program, the Black Students’ Union, and the National Society of Black Engineers. As a member of the varsity basketball team, she earned both NEWMAC and D3hoops.com Region 2 Rookie of the Year honors in 2023.

Sofia Lara

Hailing from Los Angeles, Sofia Lara is a senior majoring in biological engineering with a minor in Spanish. As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, she will pursue a DPhil in clinical medicine, leveraging UK biobank data to develop sex-stratified dosing protocols and safety guidelines for the NHS.

Lara aspires to transform biological complexity from medicine’s blind spots into a therapeutic superpower where variability reveals hidden possibilities and precision medicine becomes truly precise.

At the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Lara investigates the cGAS-STING immune pathway in cancer. Her thesis, a comprehensive genome-wide association study illuminating the role of STING variation in disease pathology, aims to expand understanding of STING-linked immune disorders.

Lara co-founded the MIT-Harvard Future of Biology Conference, convening multidisciplinary researchers to interrogate vulnerabilities in cancer biology. As president of MIT Baker House, she steered community initiatives and executed the legendary Piano Drop, mobilizing hundreds of students in an enduring ritual of collective resilience. Lara captains the MIT Archery Team, serves as music director for MIT Catholic Community, and channels empathy through hand-stitched crocheted octopuses for pediatric patients at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Sophia Wang ’24

Sophia Wang, from Woodbridge, Connecticut, graduated with a BS in aerospace engineering and a concentration in the design of highly autonomous systems. At Oxford, she will pursue an MSc in mathematical and theoretical physics, followed by an MSc in global governance and diplomacy.

As an undergraduate, Wang conducted research with the MIT Space Telecommunications Astronomy Radiation (STAR) Lab and the MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group and Center for Bits and Atoms. She also interned at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working on engineering projects for exoplanet detection missions, the Mars Sample Return mission, and terrestrial proofs-of-concept for self-assembly in space.

Since graduating from MIT, Wang has been engaged in a number of projects. In Bhutan, she contributes to national technology policy centered on mindful development. In Japan, she is a founding researcher at the Henkaku Center, where she is creating an international network of academic institutions. As a venture capitalist, she recently worked with commercial space stations on the effort to replace the International Space Station, which will decommission in 2030. Wang’s creative prototyping tools, such as a modular electromechanical construction kit, are used worldwide through the Fab Foundation, a network of 2,500+ community digital fabrication labs.

An avid cook, Wang created with friends Mince, a pop-up restaurant that serves fine-dining meals to MIT students. Through MIT Global Teaching Labs, Wang taught STEM courses in Kazakhstan and Germany, and she taught digital fabrication and 3D printing workshops across the U.S. as a teacher and cyclist with MIT Spokes. 

This article was updated on February 28 to reflect the addition of Rachel Zhang ’21.

MIT senior Markey Freudenburg-Puricelli and alumnae Abigail (“Abbie”) Schipper ’24 and Rachel Zhang ’21 have been selected as Gates Cambridge Scholars and will begin graduate studies this fall in the field of their choice at Cambridge University in the U.K.

Now celebrating its 25th year, the Gates Cambridge program provides fully funded post-graduate scholarships to outstanding applicants from countries outside of the U.K. The mission of Gates Cambridge is to build a global network of future leaders committed to changing the world for the better.

Students interested in applying to Gates Cambridge should contact Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships in Career Advising and Professional Development.

Markey Freudenburg-Puricelli

Freudenburg-Puricelli is majoring in Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences and minoring in Spanish. Her passion for geoscience has led her to travel to different corners of the world to conduct geologic fieldwork. These experiences have motivated her to pursue a career in developing scientific policy and environmental regulation that can protect those most vulnerable to climate change. As a Gates Cambridge Scholar, she will pursue an MPhil in environmental policy.

Arriving at MIT, Freudenburg-Puricelli joined the Terrascope first-year learning community, which focuses on hands-on education relating to global environmental issues. She then became an undergraduate research assistant in the McGee Lab for Paleoclimate and Geochronology, where she gathered and interpreted data used to understand climate features of permafrost across northern Canada.

Following a summer internship in Chile researching volcanoes at the Universidad Católica del Norte, Freudenburg-Puricelli joined the Gehring Lab for Plant Genetics, Epigenetics, and Seed Biology. Last summer, she traveled to Peru to work with the Department of Paleontology at the Universidad Nacional de Piura, conducting fieldwork and preserving and organizing fossil specimens. Freudenburg-Puricelli has also done fieldwork on sedimentology in New Mexico, geological mapping in the Mojave Desert, and field oceanography onboard the SSV Corwith Cramer.

On campus, Freudenburg-Puricelli is an avid glassblower and has been a teaching assistant at the MIT glassblowing lab. She is also a tour guide for the MIT Office of Admissions and has volunteered with the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences’ first-year pre-orientation program.

Abigail “Abbie” Schipper ’24

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Schipper graduated from MIT with a BS in mechanical engineering and a minor in biology. At Cambridge, she will pursue an MPhil in engineering, researching medical devices used in pre-hospital trauma systems in low- and middle-income countries with the Cambridge Health Systems Design group.

At MIT, Schipper was a member of MIT Emergency Medical Services, volunteering on the ambulance and serving as the heartsafe officer and director of ambulance operations. Inspired by her work in CPR education, she helped create the LifeSaveHer project, which aims to decrease the gender disparity in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival outcomes through the creation of female CPR mannequins and associated research. This team was the first-place winner of the 2023 PKG IDEAS Competition and a recipient of the Eloranta Research Fellowship.

Schipper’s work has also focused on designing medical devices for low-resource or extreme environments. As an undergraduate, she performed research in the lab of Professor Giovanni Traverso, where she worked on a project designing a drug delivery implant for regions with limited access to surgery. During a summer internship at the University College London Collaborative Center for Inclusion Health, she worked with the U.K.’s National Health Service to create durable, low-cost carbon dioxide sensors to approximate the risk of airborne infectious disease transmission in shelters for people experiencing homelessness.

After graduation, Schipper interned at SAGA Space Architecture through MISTI Denmark, designing life support systems for an underwater habitat that will be used for astronaut training and oceanographic research.

Schipper was a member of the Concourse learning community, Sigma Kappa Sorority, and her living group, Burton 3rd. In her free time, she enjoys fixing bicycles and playing the piano.

Rachel Zhang ’21

Zhang graduated from MIT with a BS in physics in 2021. During her senior year, she was a recipient of the Joel Matthews Orloff Award. She then earned an MS in astronomy at Northwestern University. An internship at the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute deepened her interest in the applications of machine learning for astronomy. At Cambridge, she will pursue a PhD in applied mathematics and theoretical physics. 

MIT senior Mishael Quraishi has been selected as a 2025-26 Churchill Scholar and will undertake an MPhil in archaeological research at Cambridge University in the U.K. this fall.

Quraishi, who is majoring in material sciences and archeology with a minor in ancient and medieval studies, envisions a future career as a materials scientist, using archeological methods to understand how ancient techniques can be applied to modern problems.

At the Masic Lab at MIT, Quraishi was responsible for studying Egyptian blue, the world’s oldest synthetic pigment, to uncover ancient methods for mass production. Through this research, she secured an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Scientific Research, where she characterized pigments on the Amathus sarcophagus. Last fall, she presented her findings to kick off the International Roundtable on Polychromy at the Getty Museum. Quraishi has continued research in the Masic lab and her work on the “Blue Room” of Pompeii was featured on NBC nightly news.

Outside of research, Quraishi has been active in MIT’s makerspace and art communities. She has created engravings and acrylic pourings in the MIT MakerWorkshop, metal sculptures in the MIT Forge, and colored glass rods in the MIT Metropolis makerspace. Quraishi also plays the piano and harp and has sung with the Harvard Summer Chorus and the Handel and Haydn Society. She currently serves as the president of the Society for Undergraduates in Materials Science (SUMS) and captain of the lightweight women’s rowing team that won MIT’s first Division I national championship title in 2022.

“We are delighted that Mishael will have the opportunity to expand her important and interesting research at Cambridge University,” says Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships. “Her combination of scientific inquiry, humanistic approach, and creative spirit make her an ideal representative of MIT.”

The Churchill Scholarship is a highly competitive fellowship that annually offers 16 American students the opportunity to pursue a funded graduate degree in science, mathematics, or engineering at Churchill College within Cambridge University. The scholarship, which was established in 1963, honors former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s vision of U.S.-U.K. scientific exchange. Since 2017, two additional Kanders Churchill Scholarships have been awarded each year for studies in science policy.

MIT students interested in learning more about the Churchill Scholarship should contact Kim Benard in MIT Career Advising and Professional Development.