University Scholars Program

	Anthony Alberti grew up in New Providence, New Jersey, and attended 12 years in the New Providence school system. Anthony's passion for music began with piano lessons in the 3rd grade. Classically trained, he plans to fit piano leesons in his busy schedule at Duke. Anthony also began to play trumpet in 7th grade, and switched to French horn in 9th grade. Anthony played these instruments in the school concert band, orchestra, and marching band, which has won four state championships in the past five years. He also took up a trombone with valves for the jazz band. Anthony's favorite instrument, though, is the voice. He had enjoyed choral singing since the Somerset Hills Children's Choir in 6th grade, but he attributes his love for singing to the Modern Major-General song from The Pirates of Penzance, which he performed at a school voice recital. Since then, he participated in the school jazz choir, the school men's choir, three school musicals, two school plays, two all-state choirs, and two all-eastern choirs. Anthony has also tried his hand at arranging music, first with a song for the school pep band, then for a local male a capella group he and five friends founded, the Yacht Club. He arranged numerous other songs for the pep band and Yacht Club, and he is now working on a musical with a classmate.
	Ian Ballard Ian grew up in Okemos, Michigan until 7th grade when he moved to Foxboro,Massachusetts. He attended Foxboro High School, participated in track, crosscountry, and literary magazine and was the president of the Fed Challenge team and treasurer of National Honor Society. Ian divides his time between living on his sailboat, camping for long periods of time, school life, roaming the beaches of Nantucket, and fretting over what he's going to say when he's asked to declare a major in several months. His scholarly interests are split between math (enchanting, elegant, a bit daunting), neuroscience (a young field with myriad and fantastic mysteries), and literature (because books are just amazing). Ian wants to live in Paris, spend a summer camping in Alaska, backpack through Europe, sail somewhere exotic, do a summer internship in whatever he ends up majoring in, and he realizes that, sadly, he can only do some of these things. He is about to begin an internship at the Adcock lab studying the role of the dopaminergic motivational system in memory storage. Whatever he ends up doing, Ian is replete with excitement for the three years of learning, scholarly and otherwise, that lay ahead at Duke.
	Anna Brown Anna Brown grew up in Englewood, Colorado where she graduated with top honors from Cherry Creek High School. Self-motivated to learn and serve her community, Anna pursued many community service and academic interests and initiated the Keep it R.E.A.L. Leadership Program to empower teenagers at a low-income housing development. She traveled to Hawaii to attend a leadership conference with the Adventure Leadership Program. Fueling her athletic tendencies, Anna also ran cross country and distance track. At Duke, Anna has continued her distance running and recently ran her first half marathon. She also attended 4 leadership conferences her freshman year and has pursued her community service interests through tutoring and volunteering at the Duke Hospital. Anna also wrote an article for DukEngineer and will be an associate editor of the publication this year. Passionate about health education and nutrition and fitness, she joined Healthy Devils as a member of ESTEEM to challenge body image expectations and advocate for healthy living. She is majoring in Biomedical Engineering on a pre-med track with minors in Spanish and Chemistry. Anna hopes to become a bilingual doctor specializing in cancer research in the future, and in the meantime continue her passions for health education, medicine, and Spanish while at Duke.
	Ga-young Joung was born in Seoul , South Korea and grew up in Kentucky where she attended DuPont Manual High School in Louisville. She was a regular participant in Science Olympiads, Future Business Leaders of America, and the Louisville Youth Orchestra and All-State Orchestra. At Duke, Ga-Young plans to study biomedical, electrical and computer engineering, and computer science, with an interest in robotics, green technology, and neurobiology. She is active in Engineers without Borders, an organization that helps underserved communities with sustainable engineering-based projects, and volunteers at the Duke Children's Hospital. In her spare time, she enjoys playing tennis, baking banana nut bread, and watching youtube. In the future, her goals include improving her spanish, learning hip hop dance, and figuring out what she wants to do after undergrad.
	Manoj Kannusamy hails from Florida.
	Greg Kerzhner Grigoriy Kerzhner (Greg) was born in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Province of Russia. There he attended a private elementary school that placed emphasis on outdoor activities. When Greg was 9, his parents won the green card lottery, a lottery that gives people a chance to move to America permanently, and decided to move to Cleveland, Ohio. When Greg arrived in America he spoke no English, but after three years of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) classes, he adapted to American life. Today Greg continues his love for the outdoors mainly through rock climbing. He is ranked 18th in the country and is sponsored by three climbing companies. Because so many of his hobbies involve the outdoors, Greg wants to have a career that involves preserving the environment. At Duke, Greg wants to study computer science and environmental science.
	Chantel Liggett was born in Germany but grew up in Chicagoland, Illinois. There, she attended the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), leading the African American Student Association and founding a feminist multicultural student group BELLAS: Beautiful Ladies Leading a Society. During her time at IMSA she became very interested in issues of race, gender, and sexuality, and was active in facilitating campus discussions on these topics. At Duke, she is a Baldwin Scholar, one of 18 women chosen each year who are thought to have the potential to help rethink campus culture and norms and positively influence the culture for women at Duke. Chantel plans to major in Women's Studies and attain the Study of Sexualities Certificate, wishing to ultimately profess in the field of human sexuality. She enjoys dancing and is a member of Dance Black, a student-run organization that that promotes the expression of African American culture through dance. She has also served as a Public Affairs Committee Member of Duke's Black Student Alliance, with which she helped hold a voter registration drive and raise awareness about the Darfur conflict and Jena Six injustices. Chantel Liggett currently works at the Duke Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life, planning events for the LGBT community and allies. All in all, Chantel is a very open-minded, unique, and passionate character who strives to make change in the world and loves artistic expression.
	Pam Liu is from Chapel Hill , NC , and attended the North Carolina School for Science and Mathematics in Durham . During her time at NCSSM, she worked on two intensive research projects titled “A Novel In Vitro Digestion Model for the Analysis of Bioavailable Iron in Beef” and “A Spectrophotometric Analysis of the Kinetics of Alcohol Dehydrogenase Catalyzed Metabolism”. She was named a Siemens Westinghouse Semi-Finalist 2006 for the former, and won first place at the North Carolina Student Academy of Science for the latter. The summer before entering Duke, she worked as a camp counselor at the UNC science camps and the YMCA. She loves working with children and wants to obtain an early childhood education certificate from Duke. Currently, she volunteers at Lyon Park Community Center in Durham . She is still very undecided on her major. This summer she will participate in the Duke Summer Abroad in China 2008 where she will study the Chinese language and culture. Pam loves food and cuisine, and will be studying in New York City for the Fall 2008 Arts and Media program. She will open a restaurant in the future. Her hobbies include cooking, eating, playing sports including lacrosse, basketball and ping pong.
	Erxin Lu Erxin Lu is from Suzhou, China, and graduated from Suzhou High School - SIP, a bilingual public boarding school in Suzhou, and an offshoot from the ancient Suzhou Middle School, founded in 1035 during the Song Dynasty. Erxin was involved for five years with the 1+1 Help/Project Hope program, which strives to address inequities in girls' education in rural China. When her school moved to a new campus, Erxin was instrumental in founding numerous clubs, organizations, and initiatives, including book review seminars, writing workshops, a newsletter, an evniromental awareness club, a school orchestra, and a painting club. She also created a Club Establishment Team through the student government so that other students can more easily establish new clubs and programs. Additionally, Erxin served as student group leader for research on Asian wetland ecosystems; as student representative and co-founder of her school's Roots and Shoots chapter, whose parent organization was founded by Dr. Jane Goodall; and as a participant in the UNIDO Green Energy Project on the Zhoushan Kobold Turbine, the first tide-generating facility in China. Erxin is planning a double major in economics and philosophy, as well as some kind of arts minor. In the summer of 2008, Erxin finished her internship program in CitiBank Shanghai branch.

	Hassaan Memon was born was born, raised, and educated in Pakistan, before moving to Australia. At school, he was the President of the Theatre, Editor of the Poetry Journal, and a Prefect. Outside school, he was a Patisserie Apprentice and an English Tutor. At home, he used to help his mother in her beauty salon. And wedged between these three realms was his own world where he used to sit and talk to his imaginary friends, who had unlimited leisure time, for hours on the phone. He is now a telemarketer for Australia's largest telephone company and has finally learned to speak to real people.
	Alexandra Oprea graduated from "Mihai Viteazul" National College in Ploiesti, where her studies focused on Mathematics, Computer Science and English. An enthusiastic debator, Alex started debating when she was about 15 years old. In international tournaments, she has received 4 best speaker awards, 2 second prizes and 1 third prize. She was also involved in the Ecology Club and the First Aid Group, in organizing the Romanian International University Fair 2006 and 2007 and "The Geek-athlon" ( a competition of both wit and muscle :). At Duke, Alex wishes to study Economics with a twist of Law, Political Science and foreign languages and practice the "mens sana in corpore sano" principle.
	Linda Zhou grew up in New York and graduated from Wellington C. Mepham High School. She has had many interests, ranging from piano to painting to traditional Chinese dance, and her activities reflect this. A leader in her school, she was editor of the literary art journal, president of the Culture Club and English Honor Society, as well as vice president of the Spanish Honor Society. During her high school summers, Linda committed herself to science research, working in three different labs investigating heart failure and biodegradable polymers. However, she spent this past summer in China and Japan, indulging her thirst for new sights. Linda loves to read and write, despite the fact that she did not speak a word of English when she entered kindergarten. In fact, she adores languages and cultures in general, and hopes to participate in Duke's International Honors Program, while majoring in engineering and perhaps finance. She also plans to travel the world, take up swing dancing and photography, ramble endlessly on the phone about daydreams and convictions, and finally learn to cook.