Yates ’11 wins Churchill

The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States awards at least 14 of these scholarships each year to students studying natural and physical sciences, engineering, computer science or mathematics.

Part of the application process required Yates to compose a research proposal and contact the Cambridge researchers she hoped to work with. For months now, Yates has been discussing the Alzheimer’s project with prominent British chemist Chris Dobson, at whose laboratory she will be working in next year.

Yates said she became aware of Dobson’s work in a graduate-level course taught by chemistry professor Michael Hecht. She studied how some formations of amyloid-beta, a protein blamed for the neurological decay associated with Alzheimer’s, are more mobile and effective at interacting with cells. At Cambridge, she plans to research “what about the structure of these aggregates makes them cytotoxic, and how [we can] use tools like small molecules and other proteins to direct these aggregates away from toxic forms,” she said.

“She got the only A-plus in the course as a sophomore,” said Hecht, who encouraged Yates to apply for the Churchill Scholarship and put her into contact with Dobson. Hecht, who was also Yates’ academic advisor at Forbes College, said he remembers asking Yates, then a freshman, how her classes were going.

“She had this big grin, and she said, ‘I love organic chemistry!’ and I wrote that on my whiteboard so that the next few students could see it,” Hecht said, adding, “That’s Emma.”

Last semester Yates won the William Foster Memorial Prize in Chemistry, which is awarded to the Princeton senior with the highest departmental academic record. Since the spring of her junior year she has been designing nanoscale probes to look at intracellular enzymatic reactivity in associate professor Haw Yang’s lab.

“I feel like I’ve matured a lot as a scientist,” she said. “I think that that [experience] really solidified for me that I wanted to go into a career of academic research ... I was excited by the process of scientific discovery and the chance to advance human health.”

Scholarship winners need to demonstrate “character, adaptability and a demonstrated concern for the critical problems of society” in addition to academic achievement, according to the Office of International Programs website. Yates said her involvement in the Anscombe Society, Princeton Pro-Life and the Student Bioethics Forum helped define her experience at Princeton. She highlighted politics professor Robert George as a role model.

“Emma Yates is a most remarkable young woman,” George said in an e-mail. “Her formidable intellectual gifts are only part of the story. She is a kind and generous person who deeply cares for others, especially the weakest and most vulnerable members of the human family. And she boldly stands up for what she judges to be right, even when her views run counter to prevailing orthodoxies.”

After her year at Cambridge, Yates plans to enter a graduate program. She has been accepted to seven schools and is currently leaning towards attending Harvard.