Six Indian Americans are among the 51 winners of the 2024 Marshall Scholarship offered by the British Government. Winners of the prestigious scholarship pursue graduate degrees in almost any academic subject at any university in the UK.
Marshall Scholars are considered among the most accomplished recent graduates in the United States. The program received 1006 applications this year from 34 universities across 21states and the District of Columbia.
The incoming class is the seventieth class of the Marshall Scholarship program, created by an Act of British Parliament in 1953 in gratitude for the United States’ assistance under the Marshall Plan, according to a press release.
READ: Two Indian Americans among 46 Marshall scholars for 2020 (December 12, 2019)
This year’s class includes aspiring diplomats, doctors, fighter pilots, and scientists. Half of the 2024 class will pursue STEM-related degrees, including several who will study issues relating to the ethics and advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Indian American 2024 Marshall Scholarship recipients are:
Arushi Avachat, University of California, Los Angeles
Arushi Avachat, from the Bay Area, California, is studying English and Political Science with a minor in South Asian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Arushi is the author of Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment, a Young Adult novel releasing from Wednesday Books/Macmillan in January 2024. She is on contract for a second YA novel, which she is currently drafting as her English honours thesis.
Outside of publishing, Arushi has organized voter registration, gun control walkouts, and her local Women’s Marches, and she represented California in the 2020 US Senate Youth Program.
She has worked in political communications as an intern for Senator Alex Padilla as well as EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics. As a Marshall Scholar, Arushi will pursue an MA in English and American Studies as well as an MA in Global and Imperial History at the University of Oxford.
READ: Three Indian American students among 2018 Marshall Scholars (December 7, 2017)
Simar Bajaj, Harvard University
Simar Bajaj, from Fremont, California, is currently completing BAs in Chemistry and in the History of Science at Harvard University, where he was elected as junior Phi Beta Kappa.
He has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles in medical journals and over 50 news articles in a wide range of publications including The Atlantic, Time Magazine, and The Guardian.
He is the youngest recipient of the Foreign Press Association Award for Science Story of the Year and the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
He is currently a volunteer with the American Lung Cancer Screening Initiative, as well as a research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is working on numerous projects relating to obesity, lung cancer, medical education, and digital health.
He plans to continue his studies by obtaining an MSc in Global Health and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford. His ultimate goal is to become a physician-writer and policy maker, working to create a world without stigma in the promotion of global health and wellbeing.
Anushree Chaudhuri, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Anushree Chaudhuri, from San Diego, California, is studying Urban Studies and Planning as well as Economics towards a combined SB and Masters in City Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She has worked with the US Department of Energy, the World Wildlife Fund, and an ESG investing start-up, as well as with several climate and sustainability-focused groups at MIT to advance climate research and policies.
As an intern with the US Department of Energy, she developed a web application to identify buildings most in need of investment in historically disadvantaged communities.
She has worked with MIT’s Science Impact Collaborative to study local community responses to large-scale renewable energy projects, and she represented MIT as an undergraduate delegate to the United Nations COP27 in 2022.
As a Marshall Scholar, Anushree will pursue an MPhil/PhD in Environmental Policy and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Hari Choudhari, Georgetown University
Hari Choudhari spent most of his childhood in Bangalore, India and is currently studying International Politics with minors in History and German at Georgetown University.
He has been involved in multiple internships over the course of his college career, including the Center for Cross-Border Studies in Northern Ireland and the Meridian International Center.
He is currently a Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) intern with the Political Section at the US Consulate-General in Munich, Germany and will be interning in Congress with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs next semester.
His research on German security policy was published by the American-German Institute. As a Marshall Scholar, he will study Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s University Belfast, followed by an MSc in Global Leadership and Peacebuilding at King’s College London.
Sarosh Nagar, Harvard University
Sarosh (Northbrook, IL) is a senior at Harvard where he has a perfect record and is dual-concentrating in chemistry and economics with a minor in government.
He has amassed an extraordinary record of publication and policy papers, including over 10 peer-reviewed papers as an undergraduate research affiliate at Harvard’s Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and the Law (PORTAL), where his work was cited to inform a WHO treaty and in Congressional hearings regarding drug pricing.
His non-peer-reviewed work has been published in Newsweek and The Hill. He interned in the CDC’s Global Health Center, served as a Critical and Emerging Technologies Intern at the Office of the Science and Technology Advisor with the US State Department, was a fellow in the Science Policy & Regulation Programme within NICE in the UK, and served as an intern in the Office of Regulatory Affairs at the FDA.
He is the co-founder and president of Harvard’s Emerging Technology Group and developed numerous governmental, international and academic collaborations, including presenting before the White House, among many other campus activities and volunteer efforts.
Called “firmly among the top 1% of Harvard undergraduates” over the last decade, Sarosh wishes to read for two taught Master’s: one in Innovation, Public Policy and Public Value at University College London, and the second in Global Governance and Diplomacy at the University of Oxford.
Anya Wahal, Georgetown University
Anya Wahal, from Scottsdale, Arizona, graduated from Georgetown University in 2023 with a BS in Foreign Service, majoring in Science, Technology, and International Affairs, with a concentration in Energy & Environment and a minor in Chinese.
For her senior thesis, she completed research and produced a documentary on how the Colorado River Basin water shortages have affected farming communities in Arizona.
She is currently a Fulbright-Nehru Student Researcher in Delhi, India, where she is conducting ethnographic and policy research on how women in Delhi’s low-income communities are disproportionately affected by poor water quality.
She is also learning both Chinese and Hindi, in honor of her bi-racial heritage. As a Marshall Scholar, Anya will pursue an MPhil in Water Science, Policy, and Management at the University of Oxford.