More than 60 are Recipients of Highly Coveted Fellowships and Scholarships including NSF, NIH, Gilman, Goldwater, Schwarzman and Watson
They Flourished in an Academic Year Marked by Heartbreak andthe Many Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic
More than 60 students from the City University of New York are winners of prestigious national academic awards including Barry Goldwater Scholarships, Benjamin Gilman International Scholarships, Schwarzman Scholars Program and National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. These recipients bring to nearly 100 the number of honors won by CUNY students during an academic year marked by the many challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Honorees exemplify the rich diversity of CUNY students, whose success reflects the University’s mandate to provide quality education to students of all backgrounds and socioeconomic circ*mstances.
“We could not be prouder of the students who earned coveted awards and scholarships. Their work in varied fields, their scientific goals and their international, political, language and arts endeavors, inspire us and encourage our optimism, as we approach what we hope is the end of a health crisis in our city and our country,”said Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. “We wish our student honorees all the best as they move forward in their education, their careers and their lives. Their success exemplifies the University’s historic mission, and we look forward to their future endeavors, which promise to make the world better, smarter, safer and kinder.”
Other student honorees announced earlier this Spring have included11 winners of year-long fellowships and internshipsfrom the Fulbright U.S. Student Program andthree Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarships, honoring the nation’s top community college students. CUNY students also wonall 13 Kaplan Educational Foundation Awards, which help high-performing, low-income community college students in the New York City region complete their degrees and transfer, andeight Jonas E. Salk Awardsfor CUNY students accepted into medical schools or graduate biomedical sciences programs.
Goldwater Scholarships
One student from LaGuardia Community College and two from Brooklyn College are recipients of scholarships from the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. The foundation helps outstanding students to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics and is one of the oldest, most esteemed national scholarships for STEM majors in the United States. Over 5,000 students from two- and four-year colleges from across the United States were nominated for the scholarship, from which only 410 recipients were selected for the upcoming 2021-22 academic year.
Environmental Science majorVeronica Martinez Castrois the first LaGuardia Community College studentto win a Goldwater. Born and raised in Ecuador, she moved to New York City in 2018 to pursue training for a research career and hopes to earn a Ph.D. in conservation and biology and conduct research in behavioral ecology. She has collaborated with LaGuardia faculty on several environmental science research projects through the CUNY Research Scholars Program (CRSP) and NIH Bridges Program. She presented her research on thewater quality of a tributary of the East River, a Superfund site,at LaGuardia’s Undergraduate Research Conference and the 2020 CUNY Research Scholars Symposium – where she was the winning featured speaker.
The Brooklyn College Goldwater recipients areAbiha KazmiandPatrick Ihejirika, who are only the second and third Brooklyn College students to win this award. Kazmi, who studies life sciences, noted on her application her interest in obtaining an MD/Ph.D. to help cancer patients, study therapeutically targetable mechanisms of cancer and mentor aspiring scientists. Ihejirika, a psychologymajor, hopes to become a neurologist.
“I knew that medicine was my path because I am intrigued by the research on Alzheimer’s, predictive memory models and cognitive neuroscience and other things. My ambition to research solutions for neural diseases ignited my application process,”Ihejirika saidin an interview with Brooklyn College.“I stayed up all night waiting on the response. The moment my sister read my acceptance email is still surreal for me.” He added that his interest in exploring the memory stemmed from his own everyday forgetfulness. “I want to learn the theoretical answers neuroscience can provide to memory loss,” he added. “Having a psychology background is a step towards building my understanding of neural functions.”
Schwarzman Scholar
Lamount R. Evanson, a January graduate of Lehman College,was acceptedto the 2021-22 class ofSchwarzman Scholars, an elite graduate fellowship at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, created to build students’ leadership abilities and deepen their understanding of China’s role in global affairs. With its potential to serve as a launchpad for careers, the fully funded program is highly competitive: Evanson, who was among 3,600 applicants from around the globe to apply for 154 seats in Schwarzman’s sixth cohort, is Lehman’s first-ever recipient of the award.
Honorees Galore
Benjamin Gilman International Scholarships and Jeanette K. Watson Fellowships, which both emphasize global learning, account for the largest number of awards to CUNY students. Watson Fellowships provide a three-year experience of funded internships, cultural engagement, special seminars and mentorship.
The Gilman Scholarship enables American students to gain proficiency in diverse languages and cultures, skills that are critically important to their academic and career development. In 2021, Gilman is awarding funding for virtual programming as well as for traditional study abroad opportunities, as more countries around the world begin to meet its criteria for responsible travel in the wake of COVID-19.
Jeannette K. Watson Fellowships
- Bricen Fisher – Baruch College
- Bruno Santos Rodrigues – Baruch College
- Lexcy Alexis – Brooklyn College
- Nija Daniels – City College
- Kimberly Pereyra Monero – City College
- Joie Ning – John Jay College of Criminal Justice
- Klaire Geller – Macaulay Honors College-Hunter
- Jasmine Mayor – Macaulay Honors College-Hunter
- Serena Burton – Queens College
- Marlyn Paulino – Queens College
Gilman Scholarships
- Ashley Mendez Castro – Baruch College
- Aaron Chee – Baruch College
- Frieda Cohen – Baruch College
- Nishat Farhana – Baruch College
- Faraz Hameed – Baruch College
- Sydney Sarway – Baruch College
- Nicole Tarasiuk – Baruch College
- Lisa Wu – Baruch College
- Sandy Xia – Baruch College
- Jennifer Xue – Baruch College
- Amy Zheng – Baruch College
- Somi Ahmed – Hunter College
- Mahnoor Ali – Hunter College
- Mario Altamirano – Hunter College
- Christian Erwin – Hunter College
- Jakub Goclon – Hunter College
- Jia Qi He – Hunter College
- Jeremy Millares – Hunter College
- Shi Wei Zheng – Hunter College
- Sofia Latif – Lehman College
- Michael Li – Lehman College
- Destiny Salgado – Lehman College
Graduate-Level Honors
Austin L. MacDonald, a Ph.D. student, was among those awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship to support his studies on pricing financial assets by using machine learning, a facet of artificial intelligence. He is the first economics student from the CUNY Graduate Center to win the fellowship. Previously, MacDonald served in Mexico as a deputy director of the country’s treasury in its debt management office. He specialized in sovereign financing strategies and debt sustainability.
Through his research, MacDonald hopes to make real-world impacts in industry, policy and public welfare by providing a deeper understanding of the pricing of assets and how financial variables interact. “While financial economics can be perceived as a complex field, it never loses its seminal simplicity,”he told the Graduate Center.“Finance improves the welfare of society.”
Also among the Graduate Center honorees areElliot J. Wiseman,a Graduate Center Ph.D. student in anthropology who also received a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to study how crimes are reported by detectives.
Xin Xin Xing, a 2021 CUNY graduate and salutatorian of Macaulay Honors College-Hunter, received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postbaccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award, which provides an opportunity to perform research at the Institutes.
The City University of New York is the nation’s largest urban public university, a transformative engine of social mobility that is a critical component of the lifeblood of New York City. Founded in 1847 as the nation’s first free public institution of higher education, CUNY today has seven community colleges, 11 senior colleges and seven graduate or professional institutions spread across New York City’s five boroughs, serving 500,000 students of all ages and awarding 55,000 degrees each year. CUNY’s mix of quality and affordability propels almost six times as many low-income students into the middle class and beyond as all the Ivy League colleges combined. More than 80 percent of the University’s graduates stay in New York, contributing to all aspects of the city’s economic, civic and cultural life and diversifying the city’s workforce in every sector. CUNY’s graduates and faculty have received many prestigious honors, including 13 Nobel Prizes and 26 MacArthur “Genius” Grants. The University’s historic mission continues to this day: provide a first-rate public education to all students, regardless of means or background.
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