Six Indian Americans named 2012 Rhodes scholars
Six Indian American university students have been chosen the American Rhodes Scholar Class of 2012 out of a pool of 830 candidates who had been nominated by their colleges and universities.
Ishan Nath, Aysha Bagchi, Nabeel Gillani, Anand Habib, Mohit Agrawal and Tenzin Seldon are among 32 students chosen for the prestigious scholarship for two or three years study at Oxford University at about $50,000 per year.
Ishan Nath, a senior at Stanford double-majoring in economics and earth systems with a concentration in energy science, will earn an MSc in economics for development at Oxford.
Aysha Bagchi, also from Stanford, graduated in June with a double major in philosophy and history before shifting to Jerusalem, Israel, where she currently studies at its Hebrew University. She will earn an M Phil in political theory at Oxford.
The son of an Indian mother and Bangladeshi father, Nabeel Gillani is a senior at Brown University majoring in applied mathematics and computer science. At Oxford he plans to do his MSc in computer science and MSc in education.
Another Stanford graduate, Anand R. Habib, is the son of Geetha Habib, a native of Madurai, and Mohamed Habib, both biochemists in Austin. Habib plans to earn masters' degrees in public policy and medical anthropology at Oxford.
Mohit Agrawal received his BA in mathematics at Princeton last year and is currently doing a master's degree in economic policy evaluation at the National University Tenzin Seldon, a native of Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, immigrated to the US after her mother, a Tibetan refugee, won a visa lottery. Majoring in comparative studies in race and ethnicity, she will earn an MSc in refugee and forced migration studies and an MSc in modern Chinese studies.
Previous Rhodes Scholars include Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Indian filmmaker Girish Karnad, surgeon and author Atul Gawande and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Sidhartha Mukherjee.
