Two from MIT named 2024 Marshall Scholars

Anushree Chaudhuri and Rupert Li have won Marshall Scholarships, a prestigious British government-funded fellowship that offers exceptional American students the opportunity to pursue several years of graduate study in any field at any university in the United Kingdom. Up to 50 scholarships are awarded each year by the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission.

The students were advised and supported by the distinguished fellowships team, led by Associate Dean Kim Benard in Career Advising and Professional Development. They also received mentorship from the Presidential Committee on Distinguished Fellowships, co-chaired by professors Will Broadhead and Nancy Kanwisher.

“The MIT students who applied for this year's Marshall Scholarship embody that combination of intellectual prowess, hard work, and civic-mindedness that characterizes the Institute at its best,” says Broadhead. “These students are truly amazing! The thoughtfulness and optimism they demonstrated throughout the months-long exercise in critical reflection and personal growth that the application process demands impressed and inspired us all. On behalf of the Distinguished Fellowships Committee, Nancy and I are thrilled to extend our warmest congratulations to Anushree and Rupert and our very best wishes as they take their richly deserved places in the Marshall Scholar community.”

Anushree Chaudhuri

Anushree Chaudhuri from San Diego, California, will graduate next spring with bachelor’s degrees in urban studies and planning and economics and a master's in city planning. As a Marshall Scholar, she plans to pursue an MPhil/PhD in environmental policy and development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In the future, Chaudhuri hopes to work across the public and private sectors to drive structural changes that connect global environmental challenges to local community contexts.

Since 2021, Chaudhuri has worked with Professor Larry Susskind in the Science Impact Collaborative to study local responses to large-scale renewable energy projects. This past summer, she traveled around California to document the experiences of rural and Indigenous communities most directly affected by energy transitions.

Chaudhuri has also worked with the U.S. Department of Energy, the World Wildlife Fund, and an environmental, social, and governance investing startup, as well as with several groups at MIT including the Office of Sustainability, Environmental Solutions Initiative, and the Climate and Sustainability Consortium. She represented MIT as an undergraduate delegate to the United Nations COP27.

On campus, Chaudhuri co-leads the Student Sustainability Coalition, an umbrella organization for student sustainability groups. She has previously served as chair of Undergraduate Association Sustainability; a co-lead of the student campaign to revise MIT’s Fast Forward Climate Action Plan; judicial chair of Burton-Conner House; and as a representative on several campus committees, including the Corporation Joint Advisory Committee. She also loves to sing and write.

In 2023, Chaudhuri was named a Udall Scholar and an MIT Burchard Scholar. By taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines law, planning, economics, participatory research, and data science, she is committed to a public service career addressing social and climate injustices.

Rupert Li

Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Rupert Li is a concurrent senior and master’s student at MIT. He will graduate in May 2024 with a BS in mathematics, a BS in computer science, economics, and data science, and a minor in business analytics. He will also be awarded an MEng in computer science, economics, and data science.

As a graduate student in the U.K., Li will pursue the MASt degree in pure mathematics at Cambridge University, followed by the MSc in mathematics and foundations of computer science at Oxford University. Li aspires to become a professor of mathematics.

Li has written 10 math research articles, primarily in combinatorics, but also including discrete geometry, probability, and harmonic analysis. Since his first-year fall, he has worked with Adjunct Professor Henry Cohn in the MIT Department of Mathematics and has authored two papers based on this work.

Li works on sphere-packing and coding theory, a famously challenging mathematical problem that has applications in error-correcting codes, which are ubiquitously used in the digital age to protect against data corruption. He currently also works with Professor Nike Sun in the MIT math department on probability theory and Professor Jim Propp of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell on enumerative combinatorics and statistical mechanics.

Li has worked as a course designer and teaching assistant for Professor Jim Orlin of the MIT Sloan School of Management and Professor Muhamet Yildiz in the Department of Economics, and is currently head teaching assistant for class 6.7900 (Machine Learning). Li received the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and a Morgan Prize Honorable Mention for his undergraduate research. In his free time, he enjoys watching movies and playing strategy games with friends.