Feb 20, 2009 - Claremont, Calif. - Harvey Mudd College (HMC) students Andrew Higginbotham ’09 and Hallie Kuhn ’09 have been awarded the highly prestigious and competitive Churchill Scholarship for study at the University of Cambridge in England, the Winston Churchill Foundation announced recently.

Higginbotham and Kuhn represent the 14th and 15th recipients of the Churchill Scholarship from HMC and the first time two HMC students have been honored in the same year. Between 13 and 15 Churchill scholars are selected nationwide each year. This year, the foundation recognized six women and eight men with the scholarship.

According to Professor of Computer Science Ran Libeskind-Hadas, who coordinated the Churchill Scholarship application process at HMC, “This year was evidently the most competitive year for Churchill Scholarships in their history, so getting two scholarships from Mudd is particularly impressive.”

The students represent five public and five private institutions: Bryn Mawr College, Harvey Mudd College, Northwestern University, Princeton University, University of California at San Diego, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Chicago, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, University of Rochester, and University of Virginia.

Four institutions have Churchill Scholars for the first time (Bryn Mawr, Notre Dame, UCSD and UCSB), and for the first time Harvey Mudd and Northwestern each have two Churchill Scholars.

The Churchill Scholarship, tenable for nine or 12 months, depending on the academic program, is offered annually and worth between $44,000 and $50,000. It covers all university and college tuition and fees (currently about $25,000). In addition, students receive a living allowance of £10,000 if enrolled in a nine-month academic program and £12,000 if enrolled in a full-year academic program. They also receive an allowance of up to $1,000 for travel to and from the United Kingdom and the possibility of a special research grant of up to $2,000.

Previous Churchill Scholars from HMC are Rosalind Beckwith ’07, Carl Yerger ’05, Christopher (Kit) Rudolfa ’04, Joel Miller ’00, Nathaniel Brown ’98, Nikolaus Loening ’97, Jon Sorenson ’95, Peter Bogdanoff ’94, Michelle Mathys ’86, Alan Middleton ’84, David Matsumoto ’82, Roger Oba ’82 and Mark McKinstry ’73.

The Churchill Foundation provided the following profiles of the Harvey Mudd College recipients:

Andrew Higginbotham will receive his bachelor of science in physics from Harvey Mudd College, where he is the 12th Churchill Scholar. From Chapel Hill, North Carolina, he will do research in the laboratory of Dr. Jacqui Cole at the intersection of chemistry and physics, relating non-linear physical properties to chemical structure through condensed matter physics to understand better the relation between optical properties and chemical structure in organic materials. Consistently on the Dean’s List, he has done extensive original research in high intensity physics and laser-driven fusion at Harvey Mudd and at the University of Texas at Austin; he has two first-author papers under review and has received many awards. Andrew’s letters of recommendation speak of his research as “a remarkable achievement, which would be considered impressive for a senior graduate student and which is almost unheard of from an undergraduate,” and of him as “a potent combination of intelligence, diligence, creativity, and imagination.” Andrew has been active in student government. After his year at Cambridge, he plans to do his doctorate in physics in the United States.

Hallie Kuhn will receive her bachelor of science in biology from Harvey Mudd College, where she is the 13th Churchill Scholar. From Glenwood Springs, Colo., she will do research on the human papilloma virus responsible for cervical cancer in the laboratory of Dr. Nick Coleman in oncology in the Department of Pathology. At Harvey Mudd, where Hallie was consistently on the Dean’s List, she won the Brandenburger Biology Prize for outstanding performance and promise, the Purves Biology Prize, and the Biology Writing Prize; she is a member of the Sigma Chi Research Society. Throughout college she has done research on the molecular motor dynein and spent a summer at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Chemistry at the University of Oregon. She has extensive training in mathematics, chemistry, systems engineering, and computer science in preparation for work in bioinformatics. Hallie has volunteered in a rape and sexual assault crisis center in Los Angeles and in a Red Cross asylum in Denmark, where she spent a semester abroad. She is an aerobics teacher and is active in yoga and dance. After her year at Cambridge Hallie plans to return to the States to study for an M.D.-Ph.D. in clinical oncology.