Global Languages is pleased to congratulate minors and concentrators among those who have won Fulbright Fellowships this year: Booker Schelhaas ’20 (Spanish minor), Kedi Hu ’20 (French Concentrator), and Christien Williams ’20 (French concentrator).
From the MIT News story:
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers opportunities for American student scholars in over 160 countries.
Booker Schelhaas is a senior from Colorado graduating with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering and a minor in Spanish. For his Fulbright grant, he will be going to São Paulo, Brazil, to do research on redesigning a rehabilitative exoskeleton. He also looks forward to learning more about Brazilian guitar styles and experiencing Brazilian fútbol firsthand. After completing his Fulbright program and returning to the United States, Schelhaas plans on either going to graduate school or working in the medical device field.
Kedi Hu will graduate this month with double majors in chemical engineering and architecture. Passionate about sustainable development, she has worked on a number of academic and professional projects addressing environmental problems, including water scarcity, pollution capture, and grid-scale energy storage. For her Fulbright research grant at Tsinghua University in China, Hu plans to develop biodegradable electrospun membranes for air filtration applications. After Fulbright, Hu will matriculate at Columbia University to pursue a doctorate degree in chemical engineering, continuing research on grid-scale energy storage to enable a 100 percent renewable world.
Christien Williams will graduate this spring with a bachelor of science in computer science. At ENS Paris-Saclay in France, Williams will conduct research on computer vision, including techniques in deep learning and probabilistic analysis, to contribute to an automatic Earth perception system. He will receive his master of engineering degree upon completion of this work. At MIT, Williams was a captain and point guard for MIT’s varsity basketball team, a board member of Sloan Business Club, a counselor for the Freshman Leadership Program, and a member of Phi Beta Epsilon fraternity. After completing Fulbright, Williams will join Schmidt Futures as an associate product manager.