4 Princeton college students awarded Schwarzman Scholarships for research in Beijing

Princeton seniors Ilene E, Arjun Sai Krishnan, Austin Mejia and Karthik Ramesh have been named Schwarzman Students. The Schwarzman Scholarship covers the price of graduate research and dwelling towards a one-year grasp’s program at Tsinghua College in Beijing.

For its sixth class, 154 students have been chosen from around the globe from greater than 3,600 candidates. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, candidates from greater than 60 international locations interviewed earlier than panels of CEOs, authorities officers, college presidents, journalists, and non-profit executives, amongst others. This yr’s course of marked the primary time {that a} class of Schwarzman Students was chosen fully nearly.

The students will research economics and enterprise, worldwide research, and public coverage. Programs can be taught in English by professors from Tsinghua, in addition to visiting students, starting in August. This system was based by Blackstone funding agency co-founder Stephen Schwarzman.

Ilene E

Ilene E, of West Windsor, New Jersey, is a concentrator in pc science. She is pursuing certificates in visible arts and utilized arithmetic. By this system she’s going to pursue her curiosity in movie and animation.

“Most individuals view animation purely as a type of leisure. I see it as a method to ignite cross-cultural empathy inside the youthful era,” E wrote in her private assertion. “I’ve produced animated movies to extend cross-cultural understanding inside my native, educational and social communities: a begin to a broader mission that I hope to proceed as a Schwarzman Scholar, increasing my impression to push the animation business to understand its potential to function a typical floor throughout disparate cultures, planting in younger viewers the seed of true empathy and paving the best way for a extra inclusive world.”

Whereas finishing her research at Princeton, E has labored as a machine studying intern for the Beijing Institute of Large Information Analysis, an engineering practicum intern at Google, and a graphic designer for the Princeton Council on Science and Expertise. She served as government director and print designer for Princeton Pupil Design Company, managing 30 designers.

This previous summer season, E labored as a analysis intern for Adam Finkelstein, professor of pc science, and Nora Willett of Pixar Animation Studios, performing impartial analysis in 2.5D animation. In summer season 2021, she’s going to work as a analysis intern for Pixar, a possibility that was delayed as a result of coronavirus pandemic.

“Ilene has ardour and power each as an artist and a technologist, which explains partially her curiosity in pc graphics and animation,” Finkelstein mentioned. “She is a pc science main, and likewise does graphic design work, for instance, within the Princeton Pupil Design Company and for our Council on Science and Expertise. She additionally has an enthusiasm for analysis that may serve her effectively as a graduate scholar.”

Since 2017, E has served as government editor of design and graphic designer for Enterprise Right now. Her brief movie “Jane” was an official choice on the Silicon Valley Asian Pacific Movie Pageant and Princeton Unbiased Movie Pageant, and it obtained a Jury’s Selection Award on the New Jersey Younger Filmmakers’ Pageant. One other animated brief, “Dwelling,” obtained honorable point out for animation on the New Jersey Younger Filmmakers’ Pageant and received the Princeton College UCHV Quick Film Prize.

A member of Rockefeller School, E belongs to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi honor societies.

Arjun Sai Krishnan

Photograph by Nandini Krishnan

Arjun Sai Krishnan, who’s from India and Singapore, is a concentrator in pc science pursuing certificates in linguistics, utilized and computational arithmetic, and quantitative and computational biology. As a Schwarzman Scholar, he plans to review coverage and management to convey cutting-edge technological options to conservation points and local weather threats.

“As a Schwarzman Scholar, I’d acquire a useful, intellectually formative expertise that may give me the coverage basis I would like as an aspiring chief,” Krishnan wrote in his private assertion. “Whether or not it’s in a yard coral reef or a neighborhood agroforest in rural India, I need to construct a world that helps each folks and nature thrive.”

Born in India, Krishnan speaks English, Tamil, Hindi, Spanish, Kannada and Indonesian, and has studied Sanskrit.

At Princeton, Krishnan is likely one of the founders and scholar leaders of the Sunda Rainforest Mission, a student-led conservation group that initiated a collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund to guard rainforests in Sumatra, Indonesia.

In 2018, he labored as an intern at Cellworks in Bangalore, India, the place he produced a database of promising anti-cancer plant compounds. Working within the Levin Lab at Princeton in 2019 as a Princeton Environmental Institute (now Excessive Meadows Environmental Institute) summer season intern, he led a undertaking to discover animal-origin flu evolution.

Earlier this yr, along with two different Princeton college students, Krishnan based Panko, a scholar startup that’s engaged on an internet and cellular utility for eating places to dynamically modify costs to interact demand and cut back meals waste.

“I’ve recognized Arjun since he was participant in my freshman seminar, and now we have been working collectively ever since, on tasks starting from the computational modeling of sound change and language evolution (his thesis subject) to Tamil grammar and the decipherment of historic scripts,” mentioned Christiane Fellbaum, a lecturer with the rank of professor within the Council of the Humanities, the Program in Linguistics, and pc science. “Arjun will not be solely sensible, however infinitely energetic, curious, enthusiastic and able to discover something to do with language, machine studying, mangrove swamps or orangutans.”

A member of Forbes School, Krishnan participates within the Princeton Debate Panel and serves as vp of Princeton Hindu Satsangam and outreach coordinator for Princeton Swara. He’s the previous president of Princeton South Asian Theatrics. Krishnan can also be an avid nature photographer.

Austin Mejia

Photograph courtesy of Austin Mejia

Austin Mejia, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is finishing an impartial focus in pc science and public coverage, together with certificates in entrepreneurship, dance, and knowledge expertise and coverage. He plans to make use of his Schwarzman Scholarship to discover how the local weather disaster could be addressed by way of world coverage, expertise and entrepreneurship.

“Changing into a Schwarzman Scholar and learning at Tsinghua College will deepen my understanding of how China approaches the problems I’ve realized from a Western perspective,” Mejia wrote in his private assertion. “The sensible nature of Schwarzman’s curriculum — notably the Deep Dive, management improvement, and internships with local weather NGOs in Beijing — would elevate my research from the theoretical to the sensible, giving me instruments I can use to handle this world drawback.”

Mejia is founding father of Donera, which tracks and allocates contributions between 10 local weather nonprofits. He’s president of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Membership and has served as a director and board member for IgniteSTEM.

Along with working as a program administration intern at Microsoft and an engineering practicum intern at Google, Mejia additionally served as director of engineering for JÜV Consulting in New York and interned in software program improvement at Syte.ai in Tel Aviv by way of the Keller Heart’s Princeton Startup Immersion Program.

Mejia is a Nationwide Hispanic Scholar and a recipient of the Peter B. Lewis award from the Lewis Heart for the Arts. He obtained a NextGen Fellowship in Civic Influence, is a fellow with the Harvard TechxSocial Influence program and was a presenter and panelist at Princeton Analysis Day.

A residential adviser at Mathey School, Mejia enjoys performing freestyle rap and performing as a part of the Princeton Triangle Membership.

“Austin is distinctive amongst college students I’ve suggested at Princeton in marching to the beat of his personal drum, and figuring out the foundations he must pursue his mental and entrepreneurial targets,” mentioned Jennifer Rexford, the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor in Engineering, professor of pc science, and chair of the Division of Laptop Science. “He rightfully acknowledges a spot in info expertise experience in public coverage circles, and he desires to bridge that hole.”

Karthik Ramesh

Photograph courtesy of Karthik Ramesh

Karthik Ramesh, who was born in New York and raised in London and Mumbai, is a concentrator in economics. He’s pursuing a certificates in statistics and machine studying. Ramesh will use his Schwarzman Scholarship to deepen his understanding of how coverage, non-profit initiatives and the personal sector can enhance lives within the growing world.

“The Schwarzman program would improve my preparation for such a profession by offering me with a superb vantage level to judge firsthand how Chinese language leaders are responding to the threats posed to their nation’s improvement,” Ramesh mentioned. “I hope that understanding how the world’s largest economic system is adapting to the retreat of globalization could unlock contemporary insights into the trail forward for different growing international locations.”

Ramesh labored as a finance intern on the congressional marketing campaign of Tom Malinowski and as a coverage intern for Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman. This yr, he was a summer season enterprise analyst for McKinsey & Firm.

He’s the present president of the Interclub Council and the Cap and Robe Consuming Membership, and a previous president of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society Senate. He’s a participant within the Princeton Debate Panel and has served as event director for the Princeton School Debate Match.

Ramesh additionally has served as a tutor and course assistant for introductory programs in macroeconomics, microeconomics and differential calculus.

A resident of Butler School, Ramesh has carried out as lead actor in three student-written and directed comedies with Princeton South Asian Theatrics. He’s a former volunteer for an after-school homework membership for native excessive and center schoolers by way of Neighborhood Home.

“Mr. Ramesh will gentle up and energize any room he’s in, any dialog he’s in, any neighborhood during which he’s current,” mentioned Susan Wolfson, professor of English.