Two Duke Seniors Win Marshall Scholarships

Monday, December 1, 2008

Two Duke University seniors actively involved in laboratory research have been awarded Marshall Scholarships to continue in their respective fields of study after graduation.

Sally Liu, from San Diego, Calif., is a pre-med student and accomplished laboratory researcher who pole vaults on the Duke track team. She intends to study public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the London School of Economics for the next two years.

Dan Roberts, from Melville, N.Y., is an engineering student involved in research to create electromagnetic devices that function as an “invisibility cloak.” He will be earning a Certificate of Advanced Study in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and then joining the lab of Sir John Pendry, a pioneer in the field of transformational optics.

Established in 1953 to commemorate the Marshall Plan, the scholarships are awarded each year to 40 or more “talented, independent and wide-ranging” young Americans to finance two years of graduate level studies at a college or university in the United Kingdom.

“We are hugely proud that Sally Liu and Dan Roberts have been chosen as winners of the Marshall Scholarship, which is recognized worldwide as honoring the highest levels of student achievement,” said Duke President Richard H. Brodhead. “Their contributions to the Duke community are significant and lasting, and their talent holds high promise for the life of their times.”

Liu, who has already been accepted by three medical schools and hopes to hear from more, including Duke, will be deferring admission while she earns two master’s degrees in public health and health policy, planning and financing.

“Having spent time focusing on cells and the molecular level of life as an undergraduate, it will be great to be looking at things from a more macro level,” Liu said.

An A.B. Duke Scholar, Liu has worked in a Duke biology lab with assistant research professor Nina Sherwood studying muscular disorders in fruitflies, and had some clinical experience with patients in Duke’s Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, she has also worked at the Xi-an Jiaotong University in China and the University of California San Diego.

This spring will probably be the final season of her pole vaulting career, Liu said. She ranks fifth all-time among Duke women with a best of 11 feet, 10 inches. “I’m aiming for 12.”

Roberts majors in both physics and electrical and computer engineering, and minors in mathematics. He currently conducts research in the laboratory of David R. Smith, William Bevan Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Smith’s lab is known for its work in transformation optics and metamaterials -– and specifically for developing the so-called “invisibility cloak” -– and Smith has collaborated with Pendry on research. (For more about the invisibility cloak, see http://www.pratt.duke.edu/news/?id=792.)

“I am excited and honored to have the chance to work with Professor Pendry, who is the foremost authority of the field I study -- transformational optics,” Roberts said. “I couldn’t imagine a better research opportunity than to work in an emerging field with one of its leading investigators.”

“It is exciting to see that Dan will be able to continue his research with one of the giants in the field,” said Tom Katsouleas, dean of Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.

Previously, Roberts received a Goldwater Scholarship for the current school year. This scholarship provides up to $7,500 toward annual tuition and expenses to college sophomores and juniors in the field of mathematics, science or engineering.

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For more information about the Marshall Scholarship program, visit http://www.marshallscholarship.org/.