Twenty-seven sophomores and juniors have been selected as Burchard Scholars in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences for 2002 .
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. Those selected in the 15th 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 a discussion. This will allow students and faculty 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. The emphasis throughout the program will be interdisciplinary.
In addition to Dean Khoury, the selection committee consisted of professors Stephen Meyer of political science, John Hildebidle of literature, Lowell Lindgren of music and theater arts, and Margery Resnick of foreign languages and literatures.
The new Burchard Scholars are:
Juniors: Monami Chakrabarti, Alexander Phillips and Rahul Sarathy, management; Rebecca Clinton and Katrina Lust, brain and cognitive sciences (BCS); Antimony Gerhardt and Josiah Seale, electrical engineering and computer science (EECS); Shaheer Hussam, mechanical engineering; Veronica Lois, biology; Erin Mellencamp, mathematics; Megha Padi, Mikael Rechtsman and Natalia Toro, physics; and Raymond Sandza, economics.
Sophomores: Jeremy Baskin, chemistry; Guan-Jong Chen, biology and chemical engineering; Roy Esaki and Martin Kurtev, biology; Annemarie Grandke, physics; Ruimin He, Daniar Hussain and James Skelley, EECS; Tiffany Kanaga, management and French; Timothy Kreider, mathematics; Margeaux Randolph, management; Nirupama Rao, economics and management; and Christopher Taylor, computer science.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 6, 2002.
