U. tops Ivies with four Marshalls

Princeton seniors Tamara Broderick, Neir Eshel, Tianhui "Michael" Li and Alexander "P.G." Sittenfeld were recently named among the 43 national winners of the Marshall Scholarship, giving the University as many Marshall Scholars as all other Ivy League universities combined.

The coveted scholarship provides recipients with the opportunity and funds for two years of graduate study in any field at any institution in the United Kingdom.

"It was a very distant reality," Sittenfeld said of his chances of winning the award. "Having loved my extracurricular experience at Princeton, the chance to study at Oxford is certainly a dream."

The scholarship — named after former U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall — was established in 1953 as an effort to give American college students an experience in the United Kingdom and to thus improve relations between the two nations.

It is typically awarded to just over 40 applicants from a pool of about 1,000 students endorsed by their respective schools.

Harvard, Yale, Cornell and Columbia each had one winner while the United States Military Academy claimed three Marshall Scholars.

Broderick, a mathematics major from Cleveland, plans to focus primarily on the intersection of probability theory, measure theory and machine learning, subjects she became interested in through her junior and senior year independent work.

She won the Goldwater Scholarship last year for her work in mathematics and physics and has spent past summers researching dark energy and gravitational lensing.

"There's just something exciting about spending two years in England," she said. "I always wanted to go abroad but was afraid to miss the opportunity to take math classes at Princeton."

Eshel, a molecular biology major from Bethesda, Md., will study clinical neuroscience at University College London during his first year and public health at the London School of Hygiene and Topical Medicine during the second, ultimately earning two Master's degrees. He has spent five summers doing research at the National Institute of Health and one summer at the World Health Organization, and won the Goldwater Scholarship his sophomore year.

"It's a great opportunity to live abroad and study abroad and get a chance to experience a different social and academic environment," said Eshel, who is also a managing editor of The Daily Princetonian.

Li, a computer science major from Portland, Ore., will pursue a certificate in the Advanced Study of Mathematics, known as the Mathematical Tripos, at the University of Cambridge. He currently serves as a Rockefeller College peer advisor and fellow.

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"The Tripos provides an excellent opportunity to endeavor in research for the next year," Li said.

"I really like history and I think [that studying in] the U.K., being an older country than we are, one gets a better sense of the historical grandeur."

Sittenfeld, an English major and Cincinnati native, plans to study English and American literature for a master of studies degree at the University of Oxford. Head of the University Press Club and former class president, he has received the France Biddle Sophomore Prize in English and an Edwin F. Ferris Media Grant for his literary criticism and nonfiction writing.

"The main thing I'm looking forward to is being a book nerd," he said.

This year represents an improvement from the University's recent performance in the Marshall Scholarship competition. In each of the previous two years, two Princeton students won the award.

"It's really amazing that there are four people from Princeton going," Broderick said.