Yiming Chen ’24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo have been chosen as 2025 Rhodes Scholars and can start totally funded postgraduate research at Oxford University within the U.Ok. subsequent fall. In addition to MIT’s two U.S. Rhodes winners, Oluigbo and Nair, two associates had been awarded worldwide Rhodes Scholarships: Chen for Rhodes’ China constituency and Hector for the Global Rhodes Scholarship. Hector is the primary Haitian citizen to be named a Rhodes Scholar.
The students had been supported by Associate Dean Kim Benard and the Distinguished Fellowships crew in Career Advising and Professional Development. They obtained further mentorship and steerage from the Presidential Committee on Distinguished Fellowships.
“It is profoundly inspiring to work with our amazing students, who have accomplished so much at MIT and, at the same time, thought deeply about how they can have an impact in solving the world’s major challenges,” says Professor Nancy Kanwisher, who co-chairs the committee together with Professor Tom Levenson. “These students have worked hard to develop and articulate their vision and to learn to communicate it to others with passion, clarity, and confidence. We are thrilled but not surprised to see so many of them recognized this year as finalists and as winners.”
Yiming Chen ’24
Yiming Chen, from Beijing, China, and the Washington space, was named one in every of 4 Rhodes China Scholars on Sept 28. At Oxford, she’s going to pursue graduate research in engineering science, working towards her ongoing aim of advancing AI security and reliability in scientific workflows.
Chen graduated from MIT in 2024 with a BS in arithmetic and pc science and an MEng in pc science. She labored on a number of tasks involving machine studying for well being care, and targeted her grasp’s analysis on medical imaging within the Medical Vision Group of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
Collaborating with IBM Research, Chen developed a neural framework for clinical-grade lumen segmentation in intravascular ultrasound and offered her findings on the MICCAI Machine Learning in Medical Imaging convention. Additionally, she labored at Cleanlab, an MIT-founded startup, creating an open-source library to make sure the integrity of picture datasets utilized in imaginative and prescient duties.
Chen was a instructing assistant within the MIT math and electrical engineering and pc science departments, and obtained a instructing excellence award. She taught highschool college students on the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Math and was chosen to take part in MISTI Global Teaching Labs in Italy.
Having studied the guzheng, a conventional Chinese instrument, since age 4, Chen served as president of the MIT Chinese Music Ensemble, explored Eastern and Western music synergies with the MIT Chamber Music Society, and carried out on the United Nations. On campus, she was additionally lively with Asymptones a capella, MIT Ring Committee, Ribotones, Figure Skating Club, and the Undergraduate Association Innovation Committee.
Wilhem Hector
Wilhem Hector, a senior from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, majoring in mechanical engineering, was awarded a Global Rhodes Scholarship on Nov 1. The first Haitian nationwide to be named a Rhodes Scholar, Hector will pursue at Oxford a grasp’s in power programs adopted by a grasp’s in training, specializing in digital and social change. His long-term targets are twofold: pioneering Haiti’s renewable power infrastructure and increasing hands-on alternatives within the nation‘s national curriculum.
Hector developed his passion for energy through his research in the MIT Howland Lab, where he investigated the uncertainty of wind power production during active yaw control. He also helped launch the MIT Renewable Energy Clinic through his work on the sources of opposition to energy projects in the U.S. Beyond his research, Hector had notable contributions as an intern at Radia Inc. and DTU Wind Energy Systems, where he helped develop computational wind farm modeling and simulation techniques.
Outside of MIT, he leads the Hector Foundation, a nonprofit providing educational opportunities to young people in Haiti. He has raised over $80,000 in the past five years to finance their initiatives, including the construction of Project Manus, Haiti’s first open-use engineering makerspace. Hector’s service endeavors have been supported by the MIT PKG Center, which awarded him the Davis Peace Prize, the PKG Fellowship for Social Impact, and the PKG Award for Public Service.
Hector co-chairs each the Student Events Board and the Class of 2025 Senior Ball Committee and has served because the social chair for Chocolate City and the African Students Association.
Anushka Nair
Anushka Nair, from Portland, Oregon, will graduate subsequent spring with BS and MEng levels in pc science and engineering with concentrations in economics and AI. She plans to pursue a DPhil in social knowledge science on the Oxford Internet Institute. Nair goals to develop moral AI applied sciences that handle urgent societal challenges, starting with combating misinformation.
For her grasp’s thesis below Professor David Rand, Nair is growing LLM-powered fact-checking instruments to detect nuanced misinformation past human or automated capabilities. She additionally researches human-AI co-reasoning on the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence with Professor Thomas Malone. Previously, she performed analysis on autonomous car navigation at Stanford’s AI and Robotics Lab, power microgrid load balancing at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, and labored with Professor Esther Duflo in economics.
Nair interned within the Executive Office of the Secretary General on the United Nations, the place she built-in know-how options and assisted with launching the High-Level Advisory Body on AI. She additionally interned in Tesla’s power sector, contributing to Autobidder, an power buying and selling instrument, and led the launch of a platform for monitoring distributed power sources and renewable energy crops. Her work has earned her recognition as a Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing Scholar and a U.S. Presidential Scholar.
Nair has served as President of the MIT Society of Women Engineers and MIT and Harvard Women in AI, spearheading outreach packages to mentor younger ladies in STEM fields. She additionally served as president of MIT Honors Societies Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi.
David Oluigbo
David Oluigbo, from Washington, is a senior majoring in synthetic intelligence and choice making and minoring in mind and cognitive sciences. At Oxford, he’ll undertake an MS in utilized digital well being adopted by an MS in modeling for international well being. Afterward, Oluigbo plans to attend medical college with the aim of changing into a physician-scientist who researches and applies AI to handle medical challenges in low-income international locations.
Since his first yr at MIT, Oluigbo has performed neural and mind analysis with Ev Fedorenko on the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and with Susanna Mierau’s Synapse and Network Development Group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His work with Mierau led to a number of publications and a poster presentation on the Federation of European Societies annual assembly.
In a summer time internship on the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, Oluigbo designed and skilled machine-learning fashions on CT scans for computerized detection of neuroendocrine tumors, resulting in first authorship on an International Society for Optics and Photonics convention continuing paper, which he offered on the 2024 annual assembly. Oluigbo additionally did a summer time internship with the Anyscale Learning for All Laboratory on the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Oluigbo is an EMT and programs administrator officer with MIT-EMS. He is a marketing consultant for Code for Good, a consultant on the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Undergraduate Advisory Group, and holds govt roles with the Undergraduate Association, the MIT Brain and Cognitive Society, and the MIT Running Club.