Diya Kraybill ’25, Issa Mudashiru ’25, and James Zhang ’25 have been awarded the Schwarzman Scholarship for 2025, which will fully fund a one-year master’s program in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing. In total, 150 Schwarzman Scholars representing 38 countries and 105 universities were chosen this year.
First launched in 2016, the program aims to allow students to study and immerse themselves culturally while “attending lectures, traveling around the region, and developing a better understanding of China,” according to the scholarship website.
Kraybill, who is concentrating in American Politics and pursuing a certificate in History and the Practice of Diplomacy, told The Daily Princetonian that she hopes to eventually attend law school and believes that learning about the legal system in China during her time as a Schwarzman Scholar will be helpful.
Kraybill is a former senior News writer for the ‘Prince.’
“Studying at Tsinghua with leading professors and scholars will allow me to engage very deeply with topics like China’s approach to international law, and I think I wouldn’t necessarily be able to gain that through a solely U.S.-centric law curriculum,” Kraybill said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “Even if I end up practicing law in the U.S. or end up living in the U.S., I think having that knowledge and understanding firsthand will be incredibly valuable.”
During her time on campus, she has also been involved in the Princeton Legal Journal (PLJ), currently serving as its editor-in-chief, and has served as the vice president of the Class of 2025 for the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) since her first year at Princeton.
Mudashiru is majoring in Anthropology and pursuing minors in East Asian Studies and Global Health and Health Policy.
“It’s an honor to be selected as one of the scholars in the upcoming cohort, and I only have my mentors and advisors and my teammates and coaches to thank,” Mudashiru told the ‘Prince’ in a phone interview.
Mudashiru is a captain of the men’s varsity soccer team. He is also a Student-Athlete Wellness Leader and regularly participates in Princeton Varsity Club’s volunteer programs. Notably, his former teammate Benjamin Bograd ’23 was awarded a Schwarzman Scholarship in 2023.
Off the field, Mudashiru is a member of Ivy Club, the vice president of the Black Premedical Society, and an intern with the Carl A. Fields Center. He is also a mentor through the Princeton University Mentoring Program at the Carl A. Fields Center, where he helps first-year students of color get acclimated to life in the Orange Bubble. Additionally, Mudashiru has shadowed an orthopedic surgeon at Metro Orthopedics and Sports Therapy in Potomac, Md., and a critical anesthesiologist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
Mudashiru hopes to apply to medical school to become an orthopedic surgeon following the academic year in Beijing. He described his desire to apply to be a Schwarzman scholar as a way “to bridge the gap,” explaining how it “just felt like the next step.”
“I’ve developed my passions in studying Mandarin in China as well as wanting to make an impact on the African continent, starting with Sierra Leone and hopefully branching to other countries in West Africa, and then also medicine and newfound interest in global health and thinking about a lot of salient topics in health through medical anthropology.”
Zhang, a computer science major pursuing minors in Linguistics and in Statistics and Machine Learning, told the ‘Prince’ that he got the call notifying him of his acceptance while attending an information session for graduate school.
“I thought I didn’t get it because I saw a text [from] a chat group with other interviewers who were like, ‘Oh, I’m getting calls already,’ and it’s been going on for two hours … and then I’m about to grab food at the back, and my phone starts shaking. I’m like, there’s no way, I’m hallucinating.”
At Princeton, Zhang has been a TA for the Department of Computer Science and a research intern at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. He is also the past president of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club (E-Club), which he credits with sparking his interest in entrepreneurship and problem-solving.
“[In] the spring semester of my freshman year, I joined more of a leadership role in E-Club. That was a big influence on me throughout my years, getting engaged with the entrepreneurship community. I just thought it was really powerful and very interesting that you could have a problem in the world and develop a solution, build a solution, and solve it. And that’s what really drew me into entrepreneurship itself.”
Zhang, whose junior independent work and senior thesis revolve around improving optical character recognition, is interested in exploring issues around large language models in his graduate studies. He believes that the program will improve his knowledge of issues around AI in both the United States and China.
“What really drew me in was [that] I’m at the moment interested in AI safety, and I think the U.S. and China at the moment are the leaders in AI development, and I see that in the future as well,” Zhang said. “My parents are immigrants from China, and all my other family lives in China, so being able to understand AI on both sides is really interesting.”
All three seniors will begin their studies in Beijing in August 2025.
Christopher Bao is a head News editor for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Princeton, N.J. and typically covers town politics and life.
Hayk Yengibaryan is an associate News editor for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Glendale, Calif.
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