Scholars – OURS National Scholarships

National Scholarship Recipients 2024-2025

Sara Ahlich Critical Language Scholarship

Sara Ahlich (’24, Conservation and Resource Studies) was born and raised in the Bay Area, where she attended Diablo Valley College before transferring to UC Berkeley. Her studies have been focused on natural history and ecosystem management, and she hopes to use her Portuguese and Russian abilities to work in international conservation efforts. In addition to a SPUR position at Berkeley, she works for the East Bay Regional Park District and interns for the EPA. She has previously studied Russian with CLS during the inaugural year of CLS Spark and […]

Luisa Dell Gates Cambridge Scholarship

Luisa Dell (’23, Chemical Engineering) is passionate about research in synthetic biology, mentorship, and outreach. She is originally from Monterey, CA, where she attended Monterey Peninsula College before transferring to UC Berkeley. At Cambridge, Luisa hopes to overcome contemporary uropathogenic Escherichia coli antibiotic resistance and other bacterial resistance towards UTIs through the discovery of novel alternatives to traditional beta-lactam antibiotics. After earning her PhD, she hopes to continue research projects that will advance global health as well as increase diversity in STEM education.

Eli Glickman Truman Scholarship

Eli Glickman (’25, Political Science and Public Policy) is interested in the intersection between national security and emerging technologies. Eager to expand opportunities for students to engage with national security and foreign policy issues, Eli co-founded and leads the Alexander Hamilton Society at Berkeley and established the General James Doolittle Strategic Studies Fellowship to create a forum for the ROTC and civilian communities to study strategy jointly on campus. He was a 2023 Hertog War Studies Scholar at the Institute for the Study of War, an intern for U.S. Senator […]

Cooper Jacobus Goldwater Scholarship

Cooper Jacobus (’25, Astrophysics and Logic) is passionate about Computational Physics and fascinated with Cosmology and Machine Intelligence. He currently works toward solving problems in Cosmology using Machine Learning methods at UC Berkeley’s Department of Astronomy and Berkeley Lab’s Computational Cosmology Center. His research uses supercomputers to simulate the birth and history of the Cosmos to learn about the nature of gravity and dark matter. He hopes his work will inspire a new generation of scientists and shed light on the grandest mysteries of the universe. Outside of research, Cooper greatly enjoys […]

Amarpreet Kaur Rangel Fellowship

Amarpreet Kaur (’23, Social Welfare and Public Policy) is particularly interested in human rights and socioeconomic development. After working at the local, state, and federal levels of policy advocating for underserved communities, she ultimately found her passion for global public service and foreign policy. Amarpreet was a Critical Language Scholar, Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholar, and Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Fellow. She has worked for the Brennan Center for Justice and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), among other organizations. Her languages include English, Punjabi, […]

Peihang "Marshall" Li Schwarzman Scholars Program

Peihang “Marshall” Li (’23, Political Economy) is currently pursuing his MPhil study in Economic and Social History at the University of Cambridge in England. He is researching the history of U.S. pharmaceutical market regulations. At Cal, Marshall was recognized four times with the California Alumni Leadership Award. He served as Vice President of the California Lightweight Rowing Team, Chair of the Datong Society of China Studies, and as Student Assistant to Berkeley Disabled Students’ Program. Marshall seeks a scholarly understanding of the interplay between market regulations, innovation, and health outcomes. […]

Ava Ratcliff Critical Language Scholarship

Ava Ratcliff (’26, Greek & Latin/Comparative Literature) looks forward to deepening her understanding of Russian this summer in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Ava began studying Russian, alongside Ancient Greek and Latin, as a freshman at Berkeley. She plans to use the skills she develops this summer to read nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian literature in its original language. Ava is driven by a passion for reading and sharing literature with others and is currently the librarian for Bowles Hall Residential College. Before Berkeley, she served with AmeriCorps City Year as a fifth-grade teaching […]

Vishwaa Sofat Schwarzman Scholars Program

Vishwaa Sofat (’24, Political Science and Science, Technology & Society) has interned with the State Department’s Office of China Coordination, the White House (WHIAANHPI), the NYC Department of Education, and three times in Congress. At Cal, he taught a course on the U.S. Indo-Pacific alliance structure, edited for The Daily Californian’s Weekender section, worked for Fortune 500 companies through Voyager Consulting, and led the Model UN team to third in the nation. Additionally, he serves as an IIS/CPD Undergraduate Fellow in International Studies at the Berkley Risk and Security Lab […]

David Villani Critical Language Scholarship

David Villani (‘24, History /Arabic) will continue his Arabic education this summer in Amman, Jordan. He began his Arabic studies in Morocco two years ago, and has since received the Foreign Language Area Scholarship to study in Oman, where he was a recipient of the 2023 Summer Arabic Language and Media (SALAM) scholarship. He is interested in the French presence in West Africa, with a particular focus on the personal relationships created through the practice of empire. For the past year, he’s been studying the ties between French communism and […]

Valerian Weinzweig Critical Language Scholarship

Valerian Weinzweig (’25, Conservation Resource Studies) is concentrating on Agroecology with a minor in Mathematics. She dreams of being able to collaborate with scientists and practitioners across a wide range of cultures, places, and languages in order to tackle tomorrow’s agricultural challenges as a team. Valerian has previously studied Spanish and Russian, and is now overjoyed to participate in the CLS Urdu program. In particular, he looks forward to understanding the literary traditions of the Urdu language, and finally being able to belt their favorite Atif Aslam songs.

Alana Yang Goldwater Scholarship

Alana Yang (’25, MCB and Data Science) is interested in translational immunology and computational biology. She is an undergraduate researcher in the Doudna Lab, where her research involves developing an assay to streamline diagnosis for novel mutations causing ART-SCID. She is also using computational tools to analyze T cell diversity as an early predictor of whether patients with SCID need a second bone marrow transplant. After graduation, Alana plans on pursuing a PhD in molecular biology.

OURS National Scholarships