Scholars – OURS National Scholarships

National Scholarship Recipients 2022-2023

Zeliang Cai Schwarzman Scholars Program

Zeliang Cai (Economics, ’22), an international student from China, is passionate about finance, particularly welfare foundation and venture capital investment. As an undergraduate, he helped redesign an investment portfolio at a welfare foundation in China, for which he received the 2020 Project HOPE Outstanding Contribution Award. Zeliang also served as research team captain for Cal’s Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics and was the portfolio manager of a student start-up that supports college entrepreneurs and has more than $1 million assets and 70 members from universities around the […]

Nitish Dashora Astronaut Scholarship

Nitish Dashora (EECS, ‘24) was born and raised in Columbus, OH. He is extremely interested in machine learning algorithms for general intelligence, namely those concerned with robotics. He has been researching AI algorithms for high-speed, off-road self-driving at Berkeley AI Research (BAIR). He has also been working with the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience to explore semantically meaningful learning representations in computer vision. He recently worked at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory with autonomous racing and published as a first author in the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). He […]

Mengyu Dong Knight-Hennessy Scholarship

Mengyu Dong (Political Science/History, ‘15) is pursuing a master’s degree in journalism at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. Originally from Beijing, China, Mengyu has conducted research and reporting for numerous publications in the U.S., Europe, and her home country since graduating from Cal. Her work focuses on information control, grassroots resistance, and minority rights. She aspires to bring quality journalism to both English and Chinese audiences through open-source investigation and data-driven storytelling. In addition to journalism, she strives to improve access to education for children in rural China. She […]

Alexandra Feldman Yenching Scholars Program

Alexandra Feldman (Political Economy, ’22) is a native of Southern California. She first visited Beijing during a 4-week Chinese language immersion program after her sophomore year in high school, and has continued studying both Chinese and Chinese literature since then. While attending Berkeley as a Regents’ Scholar, she became the Head News Editor for the Daily Californian and began writing poetry and short stories. As a Literature and Culture student at the Yenching Academy, Alexandra plans to explore the differences between the Chinese fantasy genre and Western fantasies, looking specifically […]

Arun Johnson Astronaut Scholarship

Arun Johnson (CBE, ’23) from Redwood City, CA, has long been interested in sustainable chemistry. He began researching carbon capture, fusion energy, and nanomaterials for cleaning car exhaust in high school, winning an Emergent Ventures grant and the Pioneer Tournament. As an undergraduate, he has been performing research on the use of nanomaterials for selective water purification in Prof. Jeffrey Long’s group. He is also the Vice President of the Biofuels Technology Club, which converts waste cooking oil from the dining halls into diesel fuel. He is interning at Terraform […]

Anjali Kantharuban Gates Cambridge Scholarship

Anjali Kantharuban (Computer Science and Linguistics, ’22) will pursue her interest in natural language processing (NLP) and language revitalization at Cambridge by conducting research in Dr. Anna Korhonen’s Language Technology Laboratory. Dr. Korhonen is a key player in the small community of scholars working in the emerging field of natural language processing for low-resource linguistic dialects, so Anjali is honored to be pursuing her M.Phil in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics under her mentorship.

Amarpreet Kaur Critical Language Scholarship

Amarpreet Kaur (Social Welfare, ’22) will spend the summer studying Punjabi in Chandigarh, Punjab, India. She has spent the past few years working at the intersections of social welfare, public policy, and advocacy. Amarpreet has worked with the NAACP in Washington, D.C. and the Brennan Center for Justice, as well as other organizations. Amarpreet will use her Punjabi language skills to continue to advocate for the Punjabi-Sikh community in the United States and abroad through policy and government affairs.

Jonathan Kuo Marshall Scholarship

Jonathan Kuo (Rhetoric & Molecular and Cell Biology, ’22) will spend his year in the UK at the University of Manchester. Having done undergraduate research in the history of medicine, the university’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine is a particular draw for him. Jonathan served as editor-in-chief of the Berkeley Scientific Journal (BSJ) and co-president of the California Health Professional Student Alliance (CaHPSA) at Berkeley.

Andrew Lu Soros Fellowship

Andrew Lu (MCB, ’17) was born in Taiwan and raised from a young age in Houston, Texas. He is currently in the third year of the UCLA-Caltech Medical Scientist Training Program (MD-PhD). He is specializing in the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology, building artificial cell behaviors to better understand design principles of natural systems. Andrew discovered and embraced his life’s work as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, after taking a leave of absence after his sophomore year to evaluate his original plan to major in Computer Science and work […]

Mrunali Manjrekar Goldwater Scholarship

Mrunali Manjrekar (Bioengineering/EECS, ’23) is interested in the exciting research being conducted at the intersection of applied engineering biology and computer science working, in order words, at both the benchtop and the desktop. She plans to pursue a PhD in Computational Biology and credits UC Berkeley’s amazing “landscape of opportunity” for providing the resources and opportunities to pursue her interests. She has worked in the Nielsen lab, seeking genetic markers to explain how a particular kind of frog is able to live at high altitudes in the Andes and is […]

Ransom Miller Critical Language Scholarship

Ransom Miller (Global Studies, ’24) is headed to Tainan, Taiwan to study Mandarin. A sophomore, Ransom fit two years of Chinese into his freshman year at Cal and the following summer, qualifying him to apply for this particular CLS program. He plans to become a foreign service officer in the U.S. State Department and use his language skills throughout his career.

Kristie Moore Critical Language Scholarship

Kristie Moore (Global Studies, ’25) will continue her Russian studies in the CLS program in Bishkek, Kyrgystan this summer. Kristie, a freshman from Southern California, studied Russian in Moscow in 2019 through NSLI-Y, the U.S. State Department’s overseas language program for high school students, for which Kristie serves as an alumni representative. She hopes to study East European Studies/Russian in graduate school and possibly pursue a stateside career in the State Department.

Garrett Oman Strauss Scholarship

Garrett Oman (History, ’23) is a junior who hopes to use knowledge from his historical studies and experience in public service to bring Project Peacemeal to fruition. His studies are currently concentrated on the history of colonial North America. Oman is also a cadet enrolled in the UC Berkeley Army ROTC program. He will attend Cadet Summer Training at Fort Knox this summer with the aim of commissioning as an officer in the Spring of 2023.

Zhengfan Pan Schwarzman Scholars Program

Zhengfan Pan (B.A. Legal Studies, ’20; MIDS, ’21) anticipates that the friendships he will make as a Schwarzman Scholar will outlive the program itself, along with the benefits of gaining rare access to Chinese business and political leaders. Zhangfan was educated in New Zealand before coming to California and is excited to learn more about China, his parents’ homeland, especially its current entrepreneurial landscape and political system. Building on interests developed as a legislative intern in the California State Senate, he hopes to explore the philosophy of property law for […]

Adil Raniwala Strauss Scholarship

Adil Raniwala (Political Science, ‘22) is a Muslim American student dedicated to grassroots organizing and assisting his local community. He will use his knowledge of the Muslim student experience and project management gained from the Muslim Student Association West organization to run Project Peacemeal. Adil hopes to attend law school and pursue a career in intellectual property law.

Pedro Rodriguez Strauss Scholarship

Pedro Rodriguez (Sociology, ’23) grew up in Delano, California, a grape-growing region in the Central Valley. The son of agricultural laborers, he has also worked in the fields since the age of seven. These personal experiences are the source of his academic and public service interest in the areas of workers’ rights, immigration documentation, and environmental health and safety.

Maurice Ruttimann Critical Language Scholarship

Maurice Ruttimann (Interdisciplinary Studies, ’22) will spend the summer studying advanced Turkish in Ankara. He is now in his second semester of Turkish Poetry and Literature at Cal. To build on his linguistic skills and extend his time abroad in Turkey, Maurice has secured funding support from UC Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies to take courses on international trade at Boazii University in Istanbul in Fall 2022.

Varsha Sarveshwar Rhodes Scholarship

Varsha Sarveshwar (’20) majored in Political Science, with minors in Public Policy and History. Since graduation, she has worked as a Public Service Fellow and then as Executive Assistant for Cabinet Affairs in the office of California Governor Gavin Newsom. While at Berkeley, she was president of the ASUC and the Cal Berkeley Democrats. Varsha is deeply interested in educational policy as it relates to equity and access. At Oxford, she plans to do the MSc in Comparative Social Policy and the Masters in Public Policy.

Satyam Sharma Critical Language Scholarship

Satyam Sharma (intended Math, ORMS, and Business ,‘25) will continue pursuing his love of languages and cultures with the CLS program in Tbilisi, Georgia this summer. A freshman from Southern California, Satyam is ecstatic to make lifelong friends through the scholarship and develop a firsthand understanding of ongoing crises in the region.

Hari Srinivasan Soros Fellowship

Hari Srinivasan (Psychology/Disability Studies, ’22) maintained a 4.0 GPA at Cal while writing regular columns and articles for The Daily Californian, teaching a popular and impactful DeCal class on autism, running Team Propaganda for the makerspace Berkeley Disability Lab, serving in leadership roles in Spectrum: Autism at Cal, and, as a senior, conducting independent fully funded research on the emotion of awe as a Haas Scholar. Outside of academia, Hari has been invited to join the boards of several national advocacy organizations, and was selected to serve on the NIHs […]

James Tayali Schwarzman Scholars Program

James Tayali (Public Health, ’17) came to Cal from Malawi as a Mastercard Scholar and soon connected with Professor Sam Mchombo, who encouraged him to study Swahili and connect with the African student community on campus. This experience led James to doing health work in Kenya and, ultimately, to founding three social ventures in his home country: ICI Africa, a mentorship program for high school students; Deal Malawi, an e-commerce and online shopping site; and Keki Mawe Incorporated, which manufactures and distributes iron-fortified products to women and children. He has […]

Ian Wong Yenching Scholars Program

Ian Wong (Sociology and Economics, ’22) is a Boston native who grew up in Hong Kong. As an undergraduate, Ian served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sino-American Affairs, leading a team of nineteen editors from North America, Europe, and Asia. He has also interned at global consulting firm Albright Stonebridge Group’s China Practice, and at the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. At Berkeley, Ian conducted research on superpower technological competition and wrote his honors thesis on social movements and identity formation. At Yenching Academy, Ian intends […]

OURS National Scholarships