Fellows' Bios
Spring 2007 Fellows
EUNICE CHO received her JD from Stanford University and clerked for Hon. Judge Kim M. Wardlaw of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Los Angeles. She graduated from Yale University, magna cum laude, with distinction in the double majors of American studies and ethnicity, race and migration in 2000. She also received the Holmes Pearson Prize for best senior thesis in American studies. Eunice co-organized and participated in the US migrant rights delegation to the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism in South Africa. Since 2002, Eunice also served as the Education Director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. In this role, she headed the BRIDGE project (Building a Race and Immigration Dialogue in the Global Economy), and co-authored a curriculum for immigrant community groups in the US, which received the 2004 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. She has served as a board member for the US Human Rights Network, Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, and the Western States Center. Eunice was born in Urbana, Illinois in 1978 to parents from Korea who are naturalized US citizens. Her family resides in Tempe, Arizona. Eunice intends a career as an immigration lawyer, a political activist, and a legal scholar of migration issues. Eunice currently works as a Skadden Fellow with the National Immigration Law Center .
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YAHONNES CLEARY received his JD from Yale University in 2009. After receiving a BA, summa cum laude, with election to Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 2000, Yahonnes earned an MSc from Oxford University in modern history in 2002, where he was a Marshall Scholar. While at Columbia University, Yahonnes interned at the New York City Parks Department, and the office of Congressman Charles Rangel. Yahonnes also spent a semester abroad in Zimbabwe studying micro-credit and grassroots development. Upon returning to New York, he worked with a micro-enterprise organization in Harlem. As a Truman scholar, Yahonnes interned in the Mayor's office in Washington, DC, supporting the city's economic development initiatives. After completing his MSc, he worked as a Program Associate at the Ford Foundation supporting asset-building initiatives and later was the Lowenstein Community Development Fellow at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, working on affordable housing and prisoner re-entry initiative. In particular, he coordinated efforts to expand access to affordable home improvement financing for low-income New Jersey homeowners. Yahonnes plans to use his law degree to further his career in community development and urban policy. He was born in 1979 in Lynn, MA, to parents who emigrated from Jamaica. He grew up in the Bronx, where his mother still lives. He will be an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York. In the fall 2010, he will clerk for Hon. Barrington D. Parker, Jr. for the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
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WEI LIEN DANG is a third-year PhD candidate in physical biology and engineering at Harvard University. Recently, he completed an MS degree in applied physics at Harvard University. In 2007, he completed a master's degree in biomedical physical chemistry at Imperial College London, where he was a Marshall Scholar. In 2006, he completed his MPhil degree in engineering at the Cambridge University. He received his undergraduate degree in applied physics with a 4.0 GPA at the California Institute of Technology in 2005. He was also a member of USA Today's All-Academic College Team. At Harvard University, he joins a newly formed research-teaching group called the daVinci Group. Wei Lien worked as a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and later became involved in nanotechnology research, co-authoring a paper while still an undergraduate. He also served as an associate editor of the Caltech Undergraduate Research Journal. Wei Lien plans a career as a scholar/teacher/writer of research at the intersection between biology and the physical sciences and engineering. Wei Lien, 24, was born in Los Angeles to a family of Chinese descent. His father emigrated from Taiwan and his mother from Singapore; they are both naturalized US citizens.
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MARY FARAG is currently a PhD Candidaye in Ancient Christianity at Yale University's Department of Religious Studies. Mary was awarded the DAAD Fellowship for the year of 2009-2010. Mary completed her MA, summa cum laude, in religion at Yale University. She graduated from Harvard University, summa cum laude, after majoring in linguistics. She speaks English and Egyptian Arabic, and reads Classical Greek, Coptic and French. In the summers of 2005 and 2006, Mary developed searchable databases for The International Center for Equal Healthcare Access and assisted faculty members at Columbia University with documenting artifacts from archaeological sites in Egypt. She served as treasurer and senior editor of the Harvard Review of Philosophy, where she solicited scholarly contributions and conducted their review. She also led an educational program for women in prison. Mary intends to be a leading scholar/teacher with specialty in Coptic Orthodox liturgy and history. Now 23, she was born to parents who immigrated to the US from Egypt and are naturalized US citizens. She grew up in Hackensack, NJ.
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SHELLI FARHADIAN is a seventh-year student at the Tri-Institutional MD/PhD program with Weill Cornell Medical College, Rockefeller University and Sloan Kettering Institute. Shelli earned a BS in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003, and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to India where she researched genetic risk factors for heart disease. During her undergraduate career at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shelli conducted research on population genetics and disease, working in several different labs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford University, Yale University, and BioTransplant, Inc. She has co-authored three publications as a result of this research. Since beginning her graduate work, Shelli has been engaged in a program that educates medical students about reproductive health and was a founding member of Female Association for Clinicians, Educators, and Scientists (FACES), an organization that fosters professional mentoring of students by female physician-scientists. Her current doctoral research is on novel repellents against the malaria mosquito vector. Shelli plans to spend her career as a clinician-scientist addressing global health issues through a combination of scientific research and public policy. Shelli recently founded the Cornell Center for Human Rights, a medical clinic that evaluates asylum applicants for physical and psychological signs of torture, in order to strengthen their asylum application with a medical affidavit. Her parents fled Iran after the Shah's fall and reside in New York City.
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DOV FOX is a third-year JD candidate at Yale University. He holds a DPhil in political theory at the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Dov graduated in 2004 from Harvard University, and was the only MSc candidate in his University of Oxford class to receive distinction. At the University of Oxford, Dov held full-time lectureship posts in politics and philosophy, while publishing scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and law reviews. He has worked summers with the President's Council on Bioethics and the Federal District Court of Connecticut. Dov also performs stand-up comedy, and has authored a book on higher education and American moral culture. At Harvard University, he spearheaded a volunteer program that brings civics education to inner-city Boston public schools. Dov aspires to be a teacher and judge to "serve the cause of just and flourishing communities." He was born in Rehovot, Israel in 1981. His first languages were Hebrew and Arabic. This summer he will be a summer associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
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RICARDO GONZALEZ RUBIO is currently on leave from his PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is pursuing an MBA at Stanford University. Last summer, he received his MS from MIT. He holds a BSc in physics, summa cum laude, from the City College of New York (CCNY), where he was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. As an undergraduate, Ricardo worked with molecular nanomagnets and also investigated how students try to learn and understand Newton's Third Law. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has worked as a research and technical assistant at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Ricardo's lab work focused on the development of an X-ray guided neurosurgery system for small animals. Ricardo envisions a career in research and teaching. Now 27, Ricardo was born in the Dominican Republic, where he lived until 2002, when a limited availability of physics programs prompted him to move to the United States. Ricardo is a green card holder.
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GAURAV GUPTA is a third-year medical student at Stanford University. He majored in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, graduating in 2007 with both a BS and a MSE. Having conducted cardiovascular physiology research since his freshman year, Gaurav has been listed as a co-author on three academic publications. He also used his engineering background to develop medical devices to meet pressing clinical needs, including a method for the early detection of preterm labor and an implant for elderly patients with spinal fractures and has filed for two patents. Now 24 years old, he was born and raised in McLean, Virginia. His parents, both Indian, immigrated to America four years before Gaurav was born, and have since become American citizens.
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CYRUS HABIB is an associate in the Seattle-based law firm of Perkins Coie. He received his B.A. summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 2003, where he double-majored in Middle East Studies and English and Comparative Literature. A Truman Scholar, Cyrus worked for Senators Cantwell and Clinton during his college years. He then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, obtaining an MLitt in Postcolonial English Literature. In 2009, Cyrus graduated from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal. While at Yale, he co-authored an appellate brief under the supervision of the law school's dean, Harold Hongju Koh, testified before Congress on potential changes to U.S. currency, managed a judicial campaign in Washington State, served as a Teaching Fellow in Yale’s Political Science department, and worked on the landmark Guantanamo Bay detention case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. In 2006, Cyrus worked on Middle East business development in Google’s London office, and during his second year in law school he worked part-time for Goldman Sachs' Private Equity Group in New York. In 2008, he worked on the legal team representing Obama for America at Perkins Coie. His publications have appeared in the Washington Post, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Houston Chronicle, and his photography has been published by Princeton Architectural Press. A Seattle native, he was born in 1981 to parents who emigrated from Iran in the 1970s.
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CAROLINA GABRIELA JAUREGUI is a fourth-year PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Southern California. She recently earned a MFA degree in creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. Gabriela holds a BA in English from Loyola Marymount and an MA in English and comparative literature from the University of California at Irvine. Gabriela has published a number of poems and essays; her full-length collection of poetry, titled Controlled Decay, was published in the Spring of 2008 by Akashic Books/Black Goat Press in New York. She is currently spending time on a three-narrative novel with the working title Ball Game. Several of her screenplays have been produced, and she has delivered papers at a variety of institutions. She has also worked as the poetry editor of Crate, journal of literary borders and boundaries. Gabriela was born and raised in Mexico City, immigrating to the United States in 2000. She recently served as a judge for the American Academy of Poets.
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AMIT KAUSHAL is a second-year MD candidate and fourth-year PhD candidate at Stanford Univeristy in biomedical informatics. A Stanford University undergraduate as well, he received in 2004 his BS in biomedical computation (a major he created) and an MS in biomedical informatics. Amit plans to dedicate his career to using the tools of molecular biology, computer science, medicine, and economics to develop novel diagnostics and screening tools that will improve patient health. Now 28, Amit was born in New York City in 1981 to parents who had emigrated from India two years earlier. His parents are naturalized US citizens and live in Newhall, CA.
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MICHELLE KUO received her JD from
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DROR LADIN is a second year JD candidate at Yale University. Previously, he was a senior research and policy fellow at the African American Policy Forum. A graduate of Vassar College, he earned a BA in political science and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In his work at the African American Policy Forum, Dror led teams in writing education and advocacy materials for affirmative action, and as a Compton Fellow, he designed and led workshops for high school students about affirmative action. He was a planning committee member of the Anti-War Group at Vassar College and the founder and president of the Just Peace Group, a student group that sought to raise awareness about the Israeli and Palestinian peace movement. Dror plans to begin his career in human rights litigation and advocacy and later to become a professor of law, focusing on issues of social and racial justice. Born in Boston in 1983, Dror is the son of two naturalized US citizens who were born in Israel and immigrated to the US in 1978.
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SCOTT LEE is a fourth-year MD candidate at Harvard University and in the fall will begin his PhD at Harvard Business School in health policy and management. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University in 2003 with a BA in medical anthropology, comparative religion, and African studies. He then completed an MPhil in environment and development as a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University and an MPA in health policy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. At Harvard University, Scott directed a mentoring program for children with cerebral palsy and sang in the Harvard Glee Club. Since 2001, he has spent five summers working in rural Kenya, where he has teamed with local villagers to establish a high school and a nursery school for AIDS orphans, a microfinance program, an agricultural training program, a computer training center and a community health clinic. Scott has recently co-founded a nonprofit organization, Common Hope for Health, to support the Kenyan health clinic and other community-based health initiatives in low-resource settings. He has supplemented this hands-on experience with internships at the World Health Organization and Partners in Health. Now 27 and a naturalized citizen, Scott was nine months old when his parents immigrated to the US from Korea.
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JIE LI is a fourth-year PhD student in East Asian languages and civilizations and film studies at Harvard University, where she also received her BA in East Asian studies in 2001, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Her senior thesis, combining anthropological and literary approaches to oral history, has been awarded the Hoopes Prize and included in a Harvard University social studies syllabus. Having studied literature at the Cambridge University and the University of Heidelberg, she is fluent in English, Chinese, and German as well as conversant in French and Japanese. Jie is also a bilingual fiction writer and documentary filmmaker. Her "film portraits" of families in China and Cameroon have been shown at various campuses and film festivals, among them the Bilan du Film Ethnographique in Paris. Jie's dissertation will be on memories of the Cultural Revolution, exploring such issues as guilt and martyrdom, nostalgia and amnesia in the Chinese literary and cultural landscape. She will continue to juggle filmmaking and creative writing with an academic career. Jie, now 29, came to the US at age 11 from China and is a naturalized US citizen.
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MARIANGELA LISANTI is a fourth-year PhD candidate in physics at Stanford University. She is a 2005 graduate of Harvard University, where she received a BA, summa cum laude, in physics and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Goldwater Scholar, a National Science Foundation and NDSEG Graduate Research fellow, and a First Prize winner of the Intel Science Talent Search and Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Competition. While even in high school, she began serious research in university laboratories and a project at Harvard University won her significant recognition, including the 2002 TR100 Award, given annually to the world's top innovators under 35. At Harvard University, she was the president of the Women in Science student group and editor-in-chief of the Harvard Science Review. She is now thoroughly engaged in theoretical particle physics. She intends to be a researcher and professor, and hopes to also be involved in science policy advising. Mariangela, now 25, was born in the Bronx and raised in Connecticut. Her parents immigrated to the US from Italy and are now naturalized US citizens.
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NGOC-PHUONG LUU is a third-year MD candidate at the University of Washington School of Medicine, where she is part of the Underserved Pathway Program and is specializing in primary care. She was an undergraduate at Seattle University, where she majored in biology and graduated in 2005, magna cum laude. She was a Gates Millennium Scholar and Sullivan Scholar at her university. As a Truman Fellow, she served as staff member of the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services of the US Department of Health and Human Services. As an undergraduate, Phuong worked with Habitat for Humanity; as a medical student, she has worked at various health clinics and on the Hepatitis B campaign through the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association and has served as the lead student for the University of Washington ImproveHealthCare.org project. She intends to be a primary care physician with commitment to serve the underserved. She envisions a public policy-related career. Phuong was born in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. The family was given asylum in the US in 1990 and settled in Seattle. They are now naturalized US citizens.
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PATRICIA MCGREGOR is a third-year MFA candidate in directing at Yale University's Drama School. She graduated from Southern Methodist University in 2000 with a BFA in theater studies and spent a year at the Beckett Center at Trinity College, Dublin. As a director, actor and stage manager, she has collaborated with some of the world's leading theatre artists, including Deborah Warner and August Wilson at venues ranging from Broadway, BAM, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center Institute, The Public, and The O'Neill National Playwriting Conference. She was a Van Lier Directing Fellow at Second Stage Theatre. As a director, Patricia hopes to use theater to give voice to neglected stories. She was born on St. Croix, Virgin Islands, in 1978 to parents of mixed ancestry: her mother was born to an Irish and Italian immigrant family in London shortly before World War II, and her father was an Afro-Caribbean civil engineer. Both parents became naturalized US citizens, and her mother lives in Bryson City, NC, and her father lives in St. Croix. She volunteers with the 52nd St. Project and sits on the Executive Board of the Yale Cabaret.
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SUMIR MEGHANI completed his MBA at Harvard University in 2008 and founded his own company called Ramo Games. He holds a BA with honors in economics and a MS in computer science, both from Stanford University. When he was only sixteen years old, Sumir founded The Eyepiece Network, a company that managed a leading internet magazine and community for young adults. Eyepiece grew to reach several hundred thousand regular readers and published articles on topics ranging from politics to pop culture. Sumir oversaw a staff of more than a dozen writers and site designers based around the world. After graduating from Stanford University, Sumir worked for Yahoo! Inc., where he helped form content partnerships for the company's search business and led efforts to launch the Open Content Alliance, a free, open repository of digital text and multimedia content. He also co-founded the Hindu Students Council, the first Hindu student association at Stanford University. Sumir intends to be an entrepreneur who effects positive change in society by using digital media to enable people to communicate more effectively, and secondly, a public servant helping to design legislative policies to address issues such as the digital divide and religious freedom. He was born in the United States to Indian immigrants who have since become American citizens, and was raised in the Metro Detroit area.
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SUE MENG is a third-year JD candidate at Yale University. She completed her BA in history and literature in 2003 at Harvard University, graduating both magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, she completed master's degrees, with distinction, in both English literature and modern Chinese studies. Sue considers herself primarily a writer, combining contextual understanding with a focus on social action. At Harvard University, she began to fashion her career as a writer as an editorial columnist for the Harvard Crimson and as the fiction editor of the Harvard Advocate. She has been an editor of Let's Go China, a Harvard University guide for student travels, and a summer intern at ABC News, Forbes Magazine, and the Washington Post. Now 27, Sue came to the US with her mother when she was six. They are now naturalized US citizens. Sue grew up in New York's Chinatown, where her mother still resides.
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ANBINH PHAN is a second year law student at Georgetown University. She earned an MPA at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 2004, and a BA in philosophy, politics, and economics from Pomona College in 2001. There, she was the manager of the Volunteer Center, served in student government, and studied abroad at Oxford University. In 2000 she was selected as a Truman Scholar. While at Princeton University, she was the coordinator of an Intellectual Property Rights and Global Public Health Study in New Delhi and Mumbai. She also interned at the International Trade Center UNCTAD/WTO in Geneva and was Assistant Editor of the Journal of Public and International Affairs. Prior to her graduate study, she worked with micro-credit loan programs in Southern Vietnam through Saigon's Children Charity. Since 2004, as an international economist at the US Department of the Treasury, she worked on World Trade Organization Accession and free trade agreement negotiations, as well as the Generalized System of Preferences program. Anbinh intends a career in trade law and aspires to advance international trade policy that promotes economic development and poverty alleviation. She was born in a refugee camp in Pulau Tengah, Malaysia, as her parents were en route from Vietnam to the United States in 1980. Her parents now reside in Torrance, CA. They and Anbinh are all naturalized citizens.
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NINA SHEN RASTOGI writes the Brow Beat culture blog for Slate and, in 2011, will be co-editing DoubleX, the magazine's section for and about women. (See her work at ninashenrastogi.com.) As a Soros Fellow, she received an MA in cultural reporting and criticism from New York University's Arthur L.Carter Journalism Institute. She graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University with a BA in English, and also holds an MA in Shakespearean studies from King's College London and the Globe Theatre, where her dissertation on Measure for Measure was awarded a mark of distinction. Previously, she was an editor at Barnes and Noble Publishing, where she developed academic material in literature and drama as well as a wide range of Shakespeare titles, including new editions of the plays and a series of graphic novels. Prior to B&N, she taught English at a high school in Seattle. Nina was born in the United States in 1979 to parents who have since become American citizens. Her mother is from Taiwan and her father is from India.
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VIVIANA RISCA is a fourth-year PhD candidate in biophysics at the University of California at Berkeley. She holds a BS with distinction and honors in physics from Stanford University. Viviana was the first-place winner of the 2000 Intel Science Talent Search and was named to USA Today's All-American Academic Team the same year. Her current research focuses on the cytoskeleton, the filamentous scaffold that gives cells their shape and is thought to control their mechanical properties. In addition to her scientific pursuits, Viviana has frequently worked as a tutor. She continues to work in an after-school program for high school students in Berkeley, CA and has tutored at the Center for Excellence in Education's Research Science Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Viviana plans a career in academic research, combining techniques from biology and physics to answer questions about how cells sense and respond to their physical environment. She was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1982. She immigrated to the US in 1992, and grew up in the suburbs of New York City. She is a naturalized US citizen.
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KEYAN SALARI is a fifth-year MD/PhD candidate at the Stanford University Medical Scientist Training Program. Having defenended his PhD, Keyan is now continuing his clinical rotatins to complete MD training. He is a 2004 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a BA with honors in molecular and cellular biology. Keyan's research includes work with professors at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at San Francisco, and Stanford University, and has resulted in seven scientific publications. He was awarded Berkeley's Spencer W. Brown Award for the best undergraduate research conducted in genetics, and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Biology Fellow. Keyan plans a career as a physician-scientist-educator, with the goal of becoming a leader in cancer research and oncology, and a dedicated educator and mentor. He was born in Lansing, Michigan. Both of his parents come from small, rural towns in Iran. They arrived in America in the 1970s and are now naturalized American citizens and live in Cupertino, CA.
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ENRIQUE SCHAERER is clerking for the Honorable Carlos T. Bea of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, CA. He finished a clerkship with the Honorable James V. Selna at the US District Court for the Central District of California. He received his JD from Yale Law School in 2008. Valedictorian of his class at the University of Notre Dame, he received a BA in political science and a BBA in finance, both summa cum laude. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Enrique has interned in the offices of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and United States Senator Harry Reid. At Yale University, he represented asylum seekers as part of a clinic, Immigration Legal Services, and taught a class at a nearby high school. He has worked as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. He has also completed several marathons. Enrique plans to devote his legal career to working to end employment discrimination. He was born in Reno, Nevada, in 1982. His parents, both natives of Asuncion, Paraguay, immigrated to the United States shortly before he was born. The family now resides in Las Vegas, NV. In December 2010, he will be a third-year associate at O'Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles.
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REZA SHABANI is a third year a PhD candidate in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2006, he completed his BA, with highest honors, in economics and his MS in applied economics and finance from the University of California at Santa Cruz. As an undergraduate, he participated in many research projects, one of which -- on the health consequences for veterans of the Vietnam War -- resulted in a joint authorship. At the University of California at Santa Cruz, Reza started a chapter of the Global Youth Partnership for Africa and through various fundraising efforts amassed enough money to improve the water supply of a slum area in Kampala. In addition to these efforts, he participated as an undergraduate in the African/Black Student Alliance's mentoring program. At University of California at Berkeley, Reza primarily studies labor economics and development economics with an orientation towards issues of public policy. Born in France in 1983, Reza was brought by an uncle to the US from his native Iran at the age of seven. He was granted asylum status which has since been converted to permanent resident status.
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RAJ SHAH received an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in May. Previously, he served as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for International Technology Security in the US Department of Defense. Raj holds an AB from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Upon graduating from Princeton University, he took a job at McKinsey and Company but left 4 months after 9/11 to join the United States Air Force. A distinguished graduate of both United States Air Force pilot training and Officer Training School, Raj flew eighteen combat missions in Iraq as a captain and F-16 pilot. After four years of active duty, he transitioned to the reserves and rejoined McKinsey and Co., followed by his stint in government. Raj also has started a nonprofit foundation dedicated to improving education in his father's village in India; as a result of his fundraising efforts, the village now has a 30-unit computer lab, scholarship programs, and English tutoring programs - and the graduation rate of the village high school has tripled. Raj's career goal is to create a global technology company focused on aerospace and to eventually serve in a leadership capacity in the government. He is the son of naturalized US citizens of Indian origin. They currently reside in Bonaire, Georgia.
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GAURAV SINGAL completed his MD at the Harvard and MIT HST Program, and is performing his residency in radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed his BS degree in computer engineering at Columbia University, graduating summa cum laude and with election to Tau Beta Pi. Gaurav is interested above all in the medical potential of artificial intelligence. He has worked in labs at Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, Columbia University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology exploring robotics, neuroengineering, and computational vision. Last winter he operated several vision camps in India to address the problem of congenital blindness, which often goes misdiagnosed and is seldom treated. Combining his diverse interests in computer science, robotics and artificial intelligence, Gaurav intends to pursue a career in clinical medicine with a particular interest in developing biomedical technologies. Gaurav was born in Pittsburgh, PA. His parents emigrated from India and now reside in Maryland.
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EBUNOLUWA TAIWO received her JD from Yale Law School. In 2003, she earned a BA from Ohio State University, magna cum laude, with election to Phi Beta Kappa, and a Master de Sciences Politiques from the Institute of Political Studies, Paris. She was also chosen in 2002 as a Truman Scholar. While at Ohio State University, Ebun won numerous institutional awards and scholarships for her research, academic performance, and community service. She has served as a Policy Intern at the US Department of Labor, a John Glenn Fellow at the US Department of Justice, and an intern at the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. In addition, she was the founder/executive director of the Coalition for Equal Opportunity in Education. At Yale University, Ebun serves as Co-Director of the Yale Civil Rights Project, Treasurer of the Black Law Students Association, and Co-Chair of WYSE (Women and Youth Supporting Each Other), a youth mentorship program. Ebun intends to be a civil rights attorney, specializing in educational access. The child of Nigerian immigrants, Ebun was born in 1982. Her parents are naturalized US citizens and live in Carmel, IN. Ebun is an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York.
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YULIA VAN DOREN received her MM from Bard College's Graduate Program of the vocal arts in 2008. She is currently an independent artist. She received her BM in classical voice in the spring of 2006 from the New England Conservatory. A classical soprano, Yulia has won a number of prizes in competitions, including grand prize in the 2006 International J.S. Bach Vocal Competition. She has already amassed impressive professional engagements, particularly in Baroque music. This year, she made debuts at Carnegie Hall and Tanglewood, as well as her professional operatic debut in Seattle. Yulia was born in Moscow in 1983, immigrated with her mother to the US in 1984 and is now an American citizen.
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JAMES R. WILLIAMS is a third year JD candidate at Stanford University. A Truman Scholar, he most recently worked on environmental law and policy in India, supported by a Labouisse Fellowship. He graduated in 2006 from Princeton University, where he earned an AB summa cum laude in public and international affairs, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and won the Pyne Prize, one of Princeton University's highest undergraduate distinctions. In college, James was an active member of student government and many campus organizations, including the largest, the Student Volunteers Council, of which he was chairman. He has worked in Portland's City Hall and with Campaign for a National Majority, a national PAC. James aspires to a political career. He was born in Syracuse, NY, and grew up primarily in Portland, OR, the son of a Zoroastrian Persian mother and a Christian Indian father.
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