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Two Duke Students Win Marshall Scholarships

The scholarships will finance two years of study in the United Kingdom for Emily Heikamp, a senior majoring in biology, and Alexander Oshmyansky, a second-year medical student

Two Duke University students -- an undergraduate and a medical student -- have won Marshall Scholarships, which will finance two years of study in the United Kingdom.

Emily Heikamp of Metairie, La., a senior majoring in biology, and Alexander Oshmyansky, a second-year medical student from Littleton, Colo., both plan to study at Oxford University.

Up to 40 scholars in the United States are selected each year to study either at the graduate or, occasionally, the undergraduate level in any field. Marshall Scholars are considered potential leaders and decision-makers. The scholarships are financed by the British government and are worth about $60,000 over two years.

Heikamp, 21, plans to continue work on the molecular mechanisms of angiogenesis, which is the process by which tumors grow the new blood vessels needed to grow or metastasize. She has conducted research in molecular immunology at Duke and at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge University.

In addition to receiving topnotch training from a mentor at Oxford, she said she is looking forward to returning to Britain.

"I really like the laboratory setting in the United Kingdom," she said. "At 10 a.m. and at 3 p.m., everyone stops working for teatime. In the United States, when you work in a lab, you work all day long -- maybe you take a break for lunch."

Because of teatime, she said, she was able to meet people working in other labs who spent the break discussing their work or the latest scientific article.

"I'll really enjoy getting to know these people and can learn a lot from them," she said.

In addition to the Marshall Scholarship, Heikamp has received the Angier B. Duke Memorial Scholarship, the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Duke's 2004 Faculty Scholar Award.

In 2003, she founded the Triangle Undergraduate Research Symposium -- the first multidisciplinary, collaborative undergraduate research conference in the state of North Carolina.

Oshmyansky is in his second year of medical school at Duke. He is interested in computational neuroscience, the mathematical modeling of the brain.

"I want to figure out how the pathways of the brain work," he said.

Oshmyansky plans to earn a degree in mathematical biology from Oxford and then return to Duke to finish medical school. Eventually he wants to be an academic neurosurgeon, splitting his time between research and clinical practice, he said.

Oshmyansky, 20, graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in biochemistry after just one year. He received the Boettcher Scholarship, the most prestigious merit-based scholarship available to graduating high school seniors in Colorado.

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