Four Indian Americans among US Rhodes Scholarship winners 2024

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On Saturday, November 11, 2023, the American Rhodes Scholar Class of 2024 was announced. Four of the 32 outstanding students who won the scholarships are Indian American.  All will commence their studies at Oxford in October 2024.

The winners were selected from a pool of 862 applicants who had been nominated by their colleges and universities.

Rhodes Scholarships provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford—ranked the #1 university in the world in some global rankings—and may allow funding in some instances for four years, a press release from the institution said. Rhodes Scholars are chosen in a two-stage process. First, applicants must be endorsed by their college or university.

The 32 Rhodes Scholars chosen from the United States will join an international group of Scholars chosen from 25 other jurisdictions (more than 70 countries) around the world.

Indian Americans on the list of 2024 winners (bios provided by Rhodes) include:

Mrinalini S. Wadhwa of New York City, is a senior at Columbia University where she majors in History and Mathematics. She is co-editor-in-chief of multiple student journals, including the Columbia Journal of Asia, which she co-founded. She has won fellowships to support research in archives around the world, including in India, France, and the United Kingdom, and is current chair of the Columbia History Association. Wadhwa also co-founded a program providing a three-year English curriculum for low-income Indian students in New Delhi. At Oxford, she will pursue an M.Phil. in Modern European History.

Suhaas Bhat of Marshfield, Wisconsin, is a senior at Harvard University majoring in Social Studies and Physics. He co-founded an organization at Harvard that provides peer-facilitated group psychotherapy to students. He has developed machine learning models for designing novel drugs. He helped organize Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, resulting in the university divesting its endowment from the fossil fuel industry. He has eight peer-reviewed publications and was selected as part of the Junior 24 cohort for Phi Beta Kappa. He has worked as a machine learning researcher at DE Shaw Research, American Family Insurance, UbiquiTx, and the Church and Chatterjee labs at Harvard and Duke, respectively. At Oxford, he will pursue an M.Sc. in Mathematical Modeling and Scientific Computing and an M.Sc. in International Health and Tropical Medicine.

Nayantara K. Arora, Portland, Oregon, is a senior at the University of Oregon, Clark Honors College, where she majors in Neuroscience, with minors in Global Health and Chemistry. She conducts research in two areas: global health biomarkers in Tunisia and the relationship between the vasculature and Alzheimer’s disease. She is a Stamps Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa Public Service Scholar, and has traveled to Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, and the UK to pursue interests in global health. Arora is currently an intern with the State Department, and produces a podcast dedicated to uplifting immigrant youth stories, plays the violin, and loves learning new languages. At Oxford, Nayantara will pursue an M.Sc. in Modelling for Global Health and M.Sc. in International Health and Tropical Medicine.

Aishani Aatresh, of Saratoga, California, is a senior at Harvard College where she is majoring in complex biosocial systems. She is also a fellow at the Program on Science, Technology & Society at the Kennedy School of Government, where she balances research in preventing infectious diseases with a commitment to global public health.

During the global pandemic, she worked with the New York City health and hospital system emergency response and then undertook studies to understand the dynamics of COVID-19 with the global Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. She worked as a computational immuno-engineer with companies to develop monoclonal antibody therapies against human disease targets. Aatresh tutors at the Harvard College Writing Center. At Oxford, she plans to complete an M.Phil. degree in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance