Five students were named winners of the 2012 Gates Cambridge Scholarship by the Gates Cambridge Trust in the United Kingdom on Monday. This year’s winners were Daniel Barson ’12, Victoria A. Tobolsky ’12, Daniel Strassfeld ’12, Rachel Bolten ’10 and Jane Abbottsmith ’12. The scholarship covers the full cost of pursuing a full-time graduate degree in any subject offered at the University of Cambridge.
Barson, a senior from Cross River, N.Y., is a molecular biology concentrator with certificates in Global Health and Health Policy and Quantitative and Computational Neuroscience. He volunteers as an EMT and Rescue Technician with Princeton’s First Aid and Rescue Squad and works as a lab assistant studying local connections between neurons.
At Cambridge, he plans to study injuries to the central nervous system while pursuing an M.Phil in Clinical Neuroscience.
“I’ve always been interested in neuroscience, particularly in how neuroscience research can be applied to study neurological disease and trauma,” Barson said. “I think all my research and class work here have informed what I plan to do at Cambridge — apply some of these very interesting and new techniques to a subject I find extremely compelling: regeneration of the central nervous system after injury or disease,” he explained.
He described the scholarship as an honor.
“I feel really lucky to have been chosen,” he said. “It’s so exciting that so many of us were chosen for the scholarship; I get to go to Cambridge with people whom I am already really good friends with.”
Tobolsky, an anthropology concentrator from Philadelphia, said she was surprised and overjoyed to learn she had won the scholarship.
“I almost didn’t apply to Cambridge, let alone the Gates [scholarship], because I was like, ‘Oh, it’s never going to happen; don’t even waste your time.’ And here we are, so you never know, I guess.”
Tobolsky’s interests include human bipedality and its manifestation in the human musculoskeletal system, with a special focus on the pelvis and lower limbs. She plans to pursue an M.Phil in Human Evolutionary Studies at Cambridge, and later hopes to become a pediatric orthopedic surgeon.
Although human evolution has fascinated her since she first learned about the fossil “Lucy” in seventh grade, Tobolsky never thought she would continue study in that field while at the University.
“I declared EEB as my major when I first came to Princeton… [and] assumed I would be an EEB major,” she said. However, while she said her interests have stayed more or less the same, she changed her major as a result of a course with anthropology professor Alan Mann.
“I took Human Evolution with Professor Mann sophomore spring, and I was like, ‘Wow! This is absolutely fantastic. What else can I take in this?’ And I went on a summer course in France. When I came back I switched my major,” she said.
Daniel Strassfeld, a chemistry concentrator from Shaker Heights, Ohio, is a member of the Princeton Bioethics Forum and holds two leadership positions in Terrace Club. He is interested in synthetic organic chemistry, which he attributes to two classes he took with chemistry professor Erik Sorensen. He plans to pursue an M.Phil in the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, Technology and Medicine while at Cambridge to further his goal of becoming a chemistry professor.
“I am interested in the history and philosophy of science, especially chemistry,” he said. Strassfeld explained that he felt scientific disciplines did not always have good ways of reflecting on the questions they are and should be asking.
“Given that I want to spend my life being a chemistry professor, I think having a good understanding of what one is doing when they’re studying science and what one is doing when they are teaching [is important],” he said.
Bolten, an English concentrator with a certificate in American studies, said she believed that taking time off from school following graduation has helped her development as a writer and reader.
“I've been lucky enough to work in three really great places: a food blog, a political magazine and, currently, a nonfiction publishing imprint,” she wrote in an email.
“In each position I've gotten to know mentors who have not only helped me hone my technical skills and encouraged me to develop my existing interests in American culture, but also introduced me to a lot of smart writers whose work I might not have encountered in a classroom.”
Bolten, who is from Atherton, Calif., plans to pursue an M.Phil in English studies and research the British Mass Observation Project, where every day British citizens reported diary entries to construct a cross-section of their society. She said she believed the University’s practice of encouraging cross-disciplinary studies shaped her academic direction.
“I was able to explore a lot of unconventional texts — animated film, place names, government projects — from a very interdisciplinary perspective,” she said. “For my senior thesis, I wrote about the American Guide Series, a Depression-era collection of guidebooks to each state, and my project combined literary analysis with primary-source historical research and travel writing.”
Abbottsmith, a religion concentrator from Cincinnati, Ohio, considers the scholarship “an incredible opportunity” and says that the competition itself fosters a collegial spirit and sense of community.
“There was not a feeling that it was competitive … it was immediately just a sense of community,” she said.
Abbottsmith's interests lie in Christian ethics and its intersection with social entrepreneurship. Like Tobolsky, she did not enter Princeton intending to major in religion, but after taking Christian Ethics with professor Eric Gregory and the freshman humanities sequence, she was “converted to the humanities” and began taking classes in religion at the Princeton Theological Seminary and abroad at Oxford.
At Cambridge, she plans to pursue an M.Phil in Theology and Religious Studies and study the intersection of Christian moral duty and social entrepreneurship, which was the topic of her senior thesis.
“The question that has captured my attention is concern for others and what our responsibilities are for our neighbors, whatever that means: fellow citizens, fellow family members,” she said.
Reflecting on receiving the award, Abbottsmith said that she felt “really lucky to be where I am.”
“I can’t believe the last four years have gone by so quickly — although I still have a thesis to write,” she laughed.
The Gates Cambridge Scholarship has been awarded to 43 University undergraduates since its creation in 2000.
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