Pictured (left to right, top down): Taylor Briggs CC’24; Adina Cazacu-De Luca CC’24; Lucy Davis GS’23; Katey Eickhoff CC’24; Kay Galarza CC’24; Kambi Gathesha GS’24; Eben Hess CC’24; Clara Amanda Hu CC’24; Ashley H Kim SEAS’24; Joya Kumar CC’23; Jolie L’Heureux CC’24; Isaac Loomis CC’24; Maya Mitrasinovic CC’22; Jasper Ludington CC’24; Munirat Suleiman CC’24; Habiba Odogba CC’23; Tim Vanable CC’24; Dennis Zhang CC’24.
Not pictured: Sophia Abrahamson CC’24; Emma Glajchen SEAS’22; Nikhil Patel CC’24; Victor Swezey CC’24
Eighteen Columbia College alumni, two Columbia Engineering alumni and two Columbia General Studies alumni have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Student grants. The grants offer funding for students and young professionals to pursue individually designed international research and study projects or to teach primary or secondary school in English-language classrooms around the world.
The program awards approximately 1,900 grants annually in all fields of study and operates in more than 140 countries.
We asked recipients to share more about their backgrounds and upcoming projects. Read on to learn more!
2024–25 Fulbright Scholars
Sophia Abrahamson CC’24
Abrahamson, a biochemistry major from Los Angeles, conducted oncology research as an undergraduate and prioritized opportunities to teach and tutor in the sciences. As a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Pärnu, Estonia, she will teach English at local schools and hopes to foster excitement for using language skills for scientific exploration. She looks forward to strengthening cultural relationships between the United States and Estonia and plans to pursue medical school after her Fulbright year.
Taylor Briggs CC’24
Briggs, a physics major from Cambridge, U.K., who was raised in Springfield, Ill., will join Quantum Many Body Systems at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Munich, Germany, next year. She will conduct research on atomic physics and looks forward to continuing this research by pursuing doctoral studies in the same field following her Fulbright year.
Adina Cazacu-De Luca CC’24
Cazacu-De Luca, a biochemistry and anthropology double major from St. Louis, will conduct research on climate change and health in Spain next year at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. She will then begin M.D.-Ph.D. training at Harvard and plans to focus on environmental health research in order to inform and improve pediatric clinical practices.
Lucy Davis GS’23
A Santa Monica, Calif., native, Davis studied for two years at Sciences Po in Menton, France, and two years at Columbia as part of the Dual B.A. program. She majored in comparative literature with French, Arabic and Italian as focus languages and, throughout her studies, focused on how colonialism and forced migration affect language and culture. In Italy, Davis looks forward to connecting with students and the local community in Barletta, as she teaches English language skills while building her own intercultural understanding and Italian language skills.
Katey Eickhoff CC’24
Eickhoff, a neuroscience major from New Richmond, Wis., was a volunteer EMT as an undergraduate and also enjoyed working as a biology lab teaching assistant and conducting clinical research at Columbia University Irving Medical Center-NewYork Presbyterian Hospital. Next year, she will join the Neurovascular Signaling research group at Aarhus University in Denmark as a Fulbright scholar, where she will study models of neurovascular uncoupling to improve stroke interventions. She plans to apply this research experience to a career in rural medicine.
Kay Galarza CC’24
Galarza, a New York City native, majored in political science and sociology. As a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, she will spend the next year working at the U.S. Consulate General Barcelona. Throughout her undergraduate studies, Galarza maintained a commitment to international advocacy, highlighted by her most recent role at a global philanthropy and venture capital firm specializing in impact investing in emerging markets. In Spain, she hopes to build bridges across cultures and, following her Fulbright year, plans to return to her career in impact investment.
Kambi Gathesha GS’24
Born in Nairobi, Kenya, and raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Washington, D.C., Gathesha graduated with a major in history. Next year, in Kenya, he will undertake an interdisciplinary ethnographic and historical study of the Ngoma competitive dance associations in order to better understand what performance traditions can reveal about social attitudes, ideas and the processes through which cultural institutions change. Following his time in Kenya, Gathesha plans to pursue a Ph.D. in African history and continue his work as an actor and director, with the hope of developing theater and films centered on Africa and the African diaspora.
Emma Glajchen SEAS’22
Glajchen, a biomedical engineering major from Scarsdale, N.Y., will spend her Fulbright year in Berlin conducting research at the intersection of pediatric neurology and immunology. Following her time in Germany, Glajchen hopes her Fulbright project will continue to inspire her future research during graduate studies.
Eben Hess CC’24
Following his many years of volunteering at local elementary schools, Hess, an anthropology major from New York City, looks forward to teaching English in Germany next year. Beyond the classroom, Hess is excited to build his German language skills and to learn more about and compare national cultures across educational systems. Following his time in Germany, he plans to attend graduate school and pursue a career in public service.
Clara Amanda Hu CC’24
Hu, a psychology major with a concentration in mathematics from San Francisco, will research the effects of France’s assimilation model on the mental health, social relationships and cultural belonging in refugees and asylum-seeking populations of Paris. Her research draws upon previous work examining France’s mental health care system that she conducted during her study abroad at Reid Hall and her time as a research assistant in the Laboratory of Intergroup Relations and the Social Mind under Valerie Purdie-Greenaway CC’93. Following her year in Paris, Hu plans to pursue law school.
Ashley H. Kim SEAS’24
Kim, a Denver native, majored in computer science and complemented her studies with coursework in philosophy, computational neuroscience and cognitive science. Fascinated by the mind and exploring its underlying principles through both mathematical and philosophical rigor, Kim looks forward to researching at the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg, where she will pursue a computational neurogenomics project that builds upon her research at the Columbia Bionet and New York Genome Center Technology Innovation Labs.
Joya Kumar CC’23
Kumar, a history major with a special concentration in music who returned to her hometown of New Delhi after graduating from Columbia, looks forward to teaching English next year in a Bulgarian public high school as a Fulbright fellow. She is excited to connect with her students, immerse herself in Bulgarian culture and build Bulgarian language skills. In New York City, Kumar particularly enjoyed her engagement with the arts and music communities on- and off- campus, and looks forward to joining a local choir or musical group.
Jolie L’Heureux CC’24
Born in Oakland, Calif., L’Heureux grew up in New York City, California and Florida, and pursued a major in astrophysics with a special concentration in mathematics. Through the Fulbright, she will spend next year in Brno, Czech Republic, building on research identifying electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave events. Beyond the classroom, L’Heureux was engaged in many campus activities, including working as a teaching assistant and taking part in several science outreach initiatives. During her time in Brno and upon returning to the United States, she plans to continue sharing her passion for physics and astronomy by making science more accessible.
Isaac Loomis CC’24
Loomis was born in Moscow, Idaho, and raised in the Wood River Valley in Idaho. At Columbia, his passion for economics, Japanese language and culture, and the intersection of the two, was enhanced through his pursuit of a joint economics and mathematics major. Loomis accelerated his Japanese studies at Middlebury’s Language School summer program, a research assistantship and study abroad at Waseda University. Next year in Tokyo, Loomis will research Japan’s employee compensation practices with Watanabe Tsutomu’s lab in the Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo. He plans to pursue a career in academia, where he will continue to pose important questions through data-driven methods.
Jasper Ludington CC’24
Ludington, a history major from Carrboro, N.C., will be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant and a basketball coach in Mexico. This is an opportunity he enthusiastically pursues as part of his continued dedication to a long-term career contributing to building positive U.S.–Mexico political relations.
Maya Mitrasinovic CC’22
Mitrasinovic, a Brooklyn native and an urban studies major with a specialization in sociology, will teach English next year in Cyprus as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. She is currently an anchor production assistant at MSNBC, where she has sharpened her understanding of national and international politics, as well as of the role of journalism in global efforts to protect democracy. In Cyprus, she looks forward to immersing herself in the culture and politics of southeast Europe and hopes to inspire her students to learn more about journalism and writing. After her year in Cyprus, Mitrasinovic looks forward to pursuing a career at the intersection of journalism, the law and human rights.
Habiba Odogba CC’23
Odogba grew up in Waukesha, Wis., and majored in comparative literature and society with a concentration in African-American and African diaspora studies with an emphasis on Black Francophone populations, indigeneity, health and education. Odogba researched at Global Center Reid Hall in 2022 and returned to Paris in 2023 as a Henry Evans Traveling Fellow to produce an interactive sculpture series. As a Fulbright fellow in Abuja, Nigeria, Odogba will study Ebira weaving, aiming to reaffirm its relevance in healing through a series of blankets that symbolically raise awareness for mental health issues.
Nikhil Patel CC’24
Patel, an ancient studies major with a public health concentration, will be a Fulbright English teaching assistant in the Slovak Republic next year. He will teach at a Slovak high school, where he will aid students in building their English language skills and learning about American culture. He hopes to deepen his own understanding of Slovakian language and culture.
Munirat “Muni” Suleiman CC’24
Suleiman, a sociology and English double major from Atlanta, was involved in many campus organizations while at Columbia. She was a co-editor-in-chief of Quarto Magazine, senior editor at The Blue and White and president of the Quest Scholars Network, an organization dedicated to supporting first-generation low-income students through mentorship, community building and education. Fascinated by the intersections of social justice, literary expression and Black feminism, Suleiman will spend the next year at the Free University of Berlin, where she will conduct research on contemporary transnational Black feminist solidarity efforts between the United States and Germany.
Victor Swezey CC’24
Swezey, who is from Los Angeles, majored in comparative literature and society and will spend the next year researching in Tbilisi, Georgia, as a Fulbright research fellow. He hopes to explore Georgia’s history as a zone of contention between the West and Russia. In Tbilisi, Swezey plans to connect with local communities to collect and develop an oral history that both explores and fosters Georgia’s “culture of remembrance.” Following this research, he plans to continue his career in journalism.
Tim Vanable CC’24
Vanable, a Syracuse, N.Y., native, graduated with a major in American studies. He held senior editorships at the Columbia Political Review and the Oxford Review of Books, and was a research assistant in the history department. His love of music shaped his extracurricular activities. During his junior year, Vanable taught himself German with the goal of teaching English in Germany after graduation. He hopes to work in academia as a professor of political theory. In the meantime, he looks forward to spending the next year honing his teaching and German language skills while learning more about German culture and the local community as an English Teaching Assistant in Eschwege.
Dennis Zhang CC’24
Zhang majored in biology and immersed himself in scholarship and service centered on genetics and rare diseases. As a Fulbright researcher in Denmark, he will explore novel gene editing tools at the University of Copenhagen. He will also lead outreach programs for local Danes on the science and ethics of these technologies, an initiative inspired by courses he designed and taught to underserved high schoolers at the Double Discovery Center. After his fellowship, Zhang plans to become a physician-scientist and is excited to apply insights from his time abroad to the advancement of a holistic and compassionate future of genetic medicine.
For more information about the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, please reach out to Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.