Thirty-six outstanding MIT students selected as Burchard Scholars

The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) is pleased to announce that 36 MIT undergraduate sophomores and juniors have been named Burchard Scholars for 2025.

Elected by the Burchard Committee from a large pool of impressive applicants, all students chosen for the program have demonstrated excellence and engagement in the humanistic fields, but can major in science, design, and engineering fields as well as the humanities, arts, and social sciences.

In the course of this calendar year, the Burchard Scholars will attend seminar dinners with members of the SHASS faculty, during which they will have the chance to engage with the faculty and one another. The program is designed to both broaden horizons for promising students and provide scholars the chance to engage in friendly but challenging discussions where they hone skills for expressing, critiquing, and debating ideas with peers and mentors.

During the course of the calendar year, the scholars also attend several cultural events in the Boston metropolitan area.

The key features of these dinners are presentations by SHASS’s faculty on topics ranging from nuclear security to an economic view of artificial intelligence to cross-cultural histories in centuries-old manuscripts. Drawing on the school’s vast and varied fields of expertise, the seminars offer near-endless avenues of exploration for ambitious scholars.

It is perhaps no surprise that a high percentage of the MIT students who receive Rhodes, Marshall, and other major scholarships and fellowships are former Burchard Scholars. 

“The Burchard Scholars are a remarkable cohort of MIT undergraduates, for whom the humanities, arts and social sciences are essential, “says Charles Shadle, senior lecturer of music and interim director of the Burchard program. “They are curious, thoughtful, and eager to engage with faculty and fellow students.” 

The 2025 Burchard Scholars, their academic years, and majors are:

• Mariam Abdelbarr, sophomore, brain and cognitive sciences/business analytics
• Oyinade Esther Adeyemi, junior, humanities and engineering
• Hana Gabriela Albuquerque Sousa, sophomore, chemical engineering
• Serena An, junior, mathematics
• Juan Manuel (Manolo) Barroso, sophomore, architecture design/urban studies and planning
• Abhay Bestrapalli, junior, physics/computer science and engineering
• Will Bland, sophomore, finance
• Cristine Chen, junior, electrical engineering with computing
• Srihitha Dasari, sophomore, brain and cognitive sciences
• Oluwadara (Dara) Deru, junior, mechanical engineering
• Luke Fitzgerald, junior, mathematics
• Julianne Hannon, junior, mechanical engineering
• Yongao Hu, junior, physics/mathematics
• Elizabeth Jackson, sophomore, aeronautics and astronautics
• Ander Jurs, junior, mechanical engineering
• June Kayath, sophomore, mathematics/computer science and engineering
• Catherine Kung, junior, biological engineering/computation and cognition
• Haydn Long, junior, history/art and design
• Calvin Macatantan, junior, computer science and engineering/urban studies and planning
• Alexis MacAvoy, sophomore, chemical engineering
• Zachary (Zach) Marinov, junior, computer science and engineering
• Layna Oberg, sophomore, physics
• Jiwoo Park, junior, physics/mathematics
• Kannammai (Kanna) Pichappan, junior, brain and cognitive sciences
• Kartik Pingle, junior, computer science and engineering/physics
• Braedon Rudolph, junior, economics/physics
• Jayashabari (Shabari) Shankar, sophomore, chemistry and biology
• Karie Shen, sophomore, biological engineering
• Anson So, junior, computer science and molecular biology
• Gilford Ting, junior, electrical engineering and computer science
• Sophia Maria Torrellas, junior, computer science and engineering
• Woods Windham, sophomore, mechanical engineering/philosophy
• Sophia Yao, junior, computer science and molecular biology
• Akua Yeboah, sophomore, computation and cognition
• Emily Zhang, sophomore, finance/computer science, economics, and data science
• Leqi (Alexis) Zhou, junior, mathematics and computer science