Twenty-six sophomores and juniors have been selected as Burchard Scholars in the School of Humanities and Social Science for 1997.
The awards, named after the School's first dean, John Ely Burchard, are given to students who demonstrate unusual abilities and academic excellence in the areas embraced by the School. The students chosen in the eleventh year of competition for the awards "are from exciting and diverse backgrounds and are a remarkable group of gifted young scholars," said Dean Philip S. Khoury, co-founder of the Burchard Program and chair of the selection committee.
The Burchard Scholars and a rotating group of faculty will be invited to a series of dinners at which an MIT faculty member or visiting scholar will present work in progress, followed by discussion. This interdisciplinary program will allow students and faculty members to mix and will give students an opportunity to engage in the kind of intellectual exchange that characterizes scholarship in the humanities, arts and social sciences.
In addition to Dean Khoury, the selection committee consisted of Professor Margery Resnick (foreign languages and literatures section), Professor Stephen Van Evera (Department of Political Science), Professor Harriet Ritvo (history section and Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies), and Professor Evan Ziporyn (music and theater arts section).
The Burchard Scholars are as follows.
Juniors: Susan Born, chemical engineering; Daniel Freedman, physics; Megan Hepler, physics; Adrian Lingaya, mathematics; Aidan Low, electrical engineering and computer science; Amy Ly, nuclear engineering; Jennifer Pinson, materials science and engineering; Valaiporn Rusmintratip, chemistry; Maya Said, electrical engineering and computer science, and biology; Lydia Sandon, electrical engineering and computer science; Elizabeth Schofield, political science; Rishi Shrivastava, management science; Robinanne Jayne Stancavage, political science; Amy Towfighi, biology, and Farhan Zaidi, economics.
Sophomores: Ania Busza, biology; Emily Cooper, electrical engineering and computer science; Maitreya Dunham, biology; Matthew Herper, biology; Irene Kim, biology; William Leblanc, physics; Kalpana Mani, chemistry; Nicholas Mathewson, computer science; Christopher Rohrs, computer science; Aalok Shah, computer science, and Katharine Spayde, economics.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 12, 1997.
