04/13/95

CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558

Six students win prestigious overseas scholarships

STANFORD -- Six Stanford University undergraduates have won prestigious scholarships for overseas studies, including one of 10 Churchill Scholarships awarded each year to 10 U.S. students.

Kira Weissman, 22, a native of Palo Alto, Calif., is this year's winner of the Churchill Scholarship. The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States each year offers 10 scholarships for graduate work in engineering, mathematics, economics and science at Churchill College, Cambridge University.

Weissman, who will complete her bachelor's degree in chemistry this June, hopes to complete a master's degree at Cambridge, with a research focus on bio-synthetic chemistry. At Stanford, she has won the President's Award for Excellence in the Freshman Year and, in 1994, a Deans' Award for Academic Achievement.

Weissman was the Pfizer Undergraduate Fellow in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 1993 and has been a National Science Scholar since 1992. A teaching assistant in the Chemistry Department, she has researched with Professor James Collman and co-authored two papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

DAAD grants

In addition, John Pearson, director of the Bechtel International Center at Stanford, said this year three students were awarded DAAD (a German acronym for German Academic Exchange Service) grants. The DAAD-Stanford direct exchange awards provide for one academic year of study and research at German universities, technical universities, comprehensive universities or academies of art and science.

Andrew Elia, 22, a native of Santa Barbara, Calif., will receive his bachelor's degree in chemistry this June. He plans to conduct research at the Max-Planck-Institut for Biochemistry.

Since coming to Stanford, Elia has won a Barry Goldwater Scholarship, a Stanford Undergraduate Research Opportunities grant and a Pfizer Undergraduate Summer Fellowship. He plans eventually to earn medical and doctoral degrees and a career in biomedicine research.

Christian Heath, 22, a native of Wichita, Kan., will earn a bachelor's degree this June in German studies. He plans to study at Humboldt University, examining innovation in the German novel since the 1950s, and to investigate the political situations reflected in the works. He studied in Germany previously as a recipient of the Preistrager award, given to 50 American students each year to participate in an exchange program funded by the German government through the American Association of Teachers of German.

Bruce Lidl, 25, is a graduate student in history from Pebble Beach, Calif. He will study at the Universitaet Bonn and the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie. He plans to research the process of ideological reform in the post-World War II German Social Democratic Party, especially in relation to women, youth and refugee voters. Lidl earned his bachelor's degree from UCLA and since coming to Stanford has been a teaching assistant both in history and in the Cultures, Ideas and Values program.

Bundeskanzler Awards

Two Stanford students also won Bundeskanzler Awards; the program was created in 1990 under an agreement between the German and United States governments in the hope that people in future U.S. leadership positions would have a first-hand knowledge of Germany. The awards are for one year of study at German universities or research institutions.

Andrei Stoica, 23, of Farmington Hills, Mich., will receive his master's degree in electrical engineering in June 1996. He plans to study at the Universitaet Muenchen, pursuing a general course of study in language and literature courses that will further his understanding of German culture.

He spent a year as a Rotary Exchange Student to Belgium before coming to Stanford. Since then, he has been awarded the President's Award for Freshman Academic Excellence (1991) and the Frederick Terman Award for Academic Excellence in Engineering (1994.) Stoica plans eventually to work for a U.S. company that develops cutting-edge technology in computer engineering and networking, and assists in developing German technology.

Patricia Mazon, 28, a Stanford resident, is a doctoral candidate in history. She plans to spend her year in Germany revising her dissertation and to commence work on a new project on the first female politicians in Germany during the Weimar Republic.

After graduating summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in history and German from Rice University, Mazon has earned numerous awards on the graduate level, including a Dissertation Resident Fellowship, a Spencer Dissertation Fellowship and a Mellon Dissertation Fellowship.

She has been a teaching assistant at Stanford as well as the instructor in a course she designed on the history of German women in the 20th century. She eventually would like to become a professor of German history at a major research university.

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