Three Indian American Students Named Marshall Scholars

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Keerthana Annamaneni, Maya Ravichandran and Nitheyaa Shree Ramesh are among the 46 recipients of the 2021 Marshall Scholarships that were unveiled recently by the British government.

The winners were chosen from a record 1,190 applicants for the award, which allows American scholars to study any academic subject for up to three years at a university in the United Kingdom with funding from the British government. The award recipients will begin graduate studies at many of the UK’s top academic institutions beginning in September 2021, according to the press release from Marshal Scholarships.

Named for former U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the Marshall Scholarship began in 1953 as a gesture of gratitude to the American people for the assistance provided to the U.K. after World War II under the Marshall Plan. Former Marshall Scholars include numerous university presidents, six Pulitzer Prize winners, one Nobel laureate, 14 MacArthur Fellows, two Academy Award nominees, two Supreme Court justices, and a NASA astronaut.

Yale University alumna Annamaneni ’20 will begin study next year at Oxford University. She majored in political science at Yale, where she was part of the Multidisciplinary Academic Program in Human Rights. She interned for The New York Times, was editor-in-chief of The Politic, a Yale student-run publication, and currently is an assistant editor for Foreign Affairs, according to a press release by Yale.

Outside of journalism, Annamaneni from New York City, NY has worked for legal organizations including the Bronx Defenders and the Office of the Federal Public Defender in New Haven. For her public service, she was awarded a Yale-Jefferson Award during her senior year, said the release.

Annamaneni plans to pursue a Master of Philosophy degree in political theory at University of Oxford.

Ravichandran, 20 of New Brunswick, NJ is a computer science major in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She plans to put her scholarship to use studying computer science and artificial intelligence at University of Oxford next year.

“I thought it would be great to get a new perspective from living abroad,” as Ravichandran was quoted saying in a press release from Rutgers. “When it comes to computer science and the application of AI in medicine, there is a lot of that work going on in the UK,” she added.

According to the release, her experiences include taking premed courses, scoring a biomedical research internship on computational genomics with the National Cancer Institute, and nurturing her interest in entrepreneurship by working as a sales and trading summer analyst with Merrill Lynch and serving as president of Rutgers Venture Capital Club. She also served on the executive board of the student government, Rutgers University Student Assembly, and volunteered in the ER of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.

Ramesh, a neuroscience major from Duluth, GA is Georgia State University’s first Marshall Scholar. Through the scholarship program, she will conduct graduate-level research at the University of Bristol in UK.

According to a press release from Georgia State University, Ramesh plans for a career in neuroscience research, studying neurodegenerative disorders and designing therapies to treat them. She is passionate about science communication, and strives to serve as an ambassador for science whenever possible.

“I also want to become a neuroscience lecturer, broadening young minds in this field and training the next generation of scientists,” as Ramesh was quoted saying in the release.

Throughout her undergraduate career, which includes being a Presidential Scholar in the Honors College at Georgia State, Shree has worked in research labs with faculty in the Neuroscience Institute in Georgia State’s College of Arts & Sciences.

In 2019, the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation and the U.S. Department of National Defense Education Programs named Ramesh a Goldwater Scholar in recognition of her undergraduate research. She also is vice president and treasurer of the Georgia State chapter of Nu Rho Psi, the national honor society in neuroscience.

British Ambassador to the United States Dame Karen Pierce believes although Marshall Scholarship classes traditionally represent a diverse mix of cultural, academic, institutional and socio-economic backgrounds, the 2021 class is truly groundbreaking.

“This class, one of the most diverse and inclusive in the programme’s history, is a wonderful mirror of modern American society and demonstrates the vital role that the Marshall Scholarship continues to play in maintaining a vibrant US-UK relationship,” Pierce was quoted saying in a press release.