OURS National Scholarships

Semester: 2023-2024

Janani Mohan

Janani Mohan (’19, Political Science) is pursuing a PhD in Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University, researching European nuclear & human rights frameworks, after receiving a Master’s in International Policy from Stanford University. She is a policy analyst with a background in technology, development, and security policy for leading think tanks, government, and international organizations. Her experiences include collaborating with the United Nations Innovation Cell to monitor open-source information from the War in Ukraine, consulting with the United Nations Development Programme in South Africa to increase technology access for […]

Jon Sullivan

Jon Sullivan (’25 Sociology) is interested in studying the potential futures of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, and how these technological advances will impact the working class. They plan to pursue a PhD in Sociology with the goal of teaching at a community college. Outside of research, Jon is very active in the Laney Chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign and the Wood Street Commons, both of which seek to end poverty and homelessness by organizing people most affected. They will be using the Voyager Scholarship to collaboratively work with other […]

Drexler Madamba

Drexler Madamba (’25, History and Public Policy) was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. His academic interest is in the History of Education Policy in the United States from the 1920s to 1940s. While interning with Congresswoman Grace F. Napolitano (D-El Monte, CA), he was introduced to alternative education for at-risk youth, which sparked a curiosity about Education and Alternative Learning. Drexler aspires to pursue a career within the Education/Legal field and hopes to become a professor. For the next two years, he is focusing on his research, experiencing different […]

Ian Wong

Ian Wong (Sociology and Economics, ’22) is a Boston native who grew up in Hong Kong. Prior to joining Yenching Academy, he worked full-time in Nagasaki as an English teacher through the JET program. 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 […]

Edgar Hernandez Gallegos

Edgar Hernandez Gallegos (Asian Studies and Linguistics, ’20) is originally from Mexico but grew up in the Bay Area. As part of the Huang Scholars Program, he participated in Princeton-in-Beijing in the summer of 2018. In 2019, he interned in Shanghai at Stepping Stones, an NGO that provides education to the disadvantaged children of migrant workers. Edgar also studied at National Taiwan University and learned to play the erhu. After graduating, he taught at an immersive Chinese-language elementary school in the Bay Area. Edgar is currently furthering his Chinese language […]

Camille Chabot

Camille Chabot (Global Studies [Peace and Conflict in Asia], ’23) was born and raised in France. Her interest in China first developed at age 11 when she started to learn Mandarin and became fascinated by Chinese culture and politics. While attending Berkeley as a dual degree student between Berkeley and Sciences Po (Paris Institute of Political Studies), Camille became a research team leader at the Human Rights Center and a member of Delta Phi Epsilon (a co-ed international relations fraternity). As a Law and Society student at Yenching Academy, Camille […]

Cooper Jacobus

Cooper Jacobus (’25, Astrophysics and Logic) is passionate about Computational Physics and fascinated with Cosmology and Machine Intelligence. He currently works toward solving problems in Cosmology using AI methods at UC Berkeley’s Department of Astronomy and Berkeley Lab’s Computational Cosmology Center. His research attempts to leverage the latest developments in technology to gain new insights into the origins of the universe. Questions about what came before the Big Bang have captured his imagination, and he is using next-generation supercomputers to simulate the birth of the Cosmos. He hopes to remain […]

Freja Ekman

Freja Ekman (’18, Chemical Biology) was born in Erlangen, Germany, to parents from Sweden and Norway. Her family immigrated to San Diego, California when she was five. Freja is currently in her second year of an MD-PhD in genetics at Stanford University. She is interested in developing new genome editing tools for the treatment of hematological diseases and rare genetic diseases. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, Freja studied chemical biology, with the hope of understanding how to harness basic chemical principles to better characterize the behavior of genetic mutations […]