University Scholars Program

	Anthony Alberti is from New Providence, NJ, and he is pursuing his interests in music and physics. For the past two years he was a mellophone player in the Duke University Marching and Pep Band, and a Bass I in the Duke Chorale. This year he is singing in the Jazz Combo program and continuing to study voice through lessons and Opera Workshop, in which he played the role of Ivan for Die Fledermaus last year. Anthony is also an avid arranger and has arranged songs for men's a capella, marching band, and rock band. He is fortunate enough to have some of his arrangements performed by DUMB. He is now trying his hand at composition and electronic mixing.
	Ian Ballard grew up in Okemos, Michigan until 7th grade when he moved to Foxboro, Massachusetts. He attended Foxboro High School, participated in track, cross country, and literary magazine and was the president of the Fed Challenge team and treasurer of National Honor Society. At Duke, Ian is pursuing a Program II titled Theoretical Neuroscience, which combines neuroscience with math and physics. Ian hopes to pursue theoretical neuroscience to the graduate level and learn how to use tools from math and physics to investigate how the brain functions. To keep his life balanced, Ian also enjoys taking an English class each semester. For the last academic year and half of the summer, Ian worked in the Motivated Memory fMRI lab studying how reward and memory brain systems interact. Ian doesn't like clubs, but enjoys participating in the Duke community by visiting plays, concerts, and events put on by various selective living groups, and even a spent a winter in a tent in K-ville. The second half of Ian's summer was spent travelling through France and Sweden, working on organic farms in exchange for room, board, some good farming tips, and group singing. Ian is currently spending the semester abroad in Paris, and will hopefully be fluent in French by the time he returns to Duke in the spring.
	Anna Browngrew up in Englewood, Colorado where she graduated with high honors from Cherry Creek High School. She is passionate about service work, global health, engineering, healthy living, and writing. At Duke, Anna has been a strong leader in several organizations that have allowed her to explore her interdisciplinary interests. She founded the student organization Project HEAL: Health Education and Awareness in Latin America to work towards reducing global health disparities. Through DukeEngage and the University Scholars Program, Anna has traveled to Honduras four times in the past three years and has served hundreds of children and adults with health education workshops. She will be the Head Editor of the student-run magazine DukEngineer this year, and has written four articles for the publication in the past in addition to serving as an Associate Editor. Through the Peer Tutoring Program, Anna has worked with individual students to improve skills in General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Spanish. Other fulfilling tutoring pursuits have included a long-time commitment to working with immigrant students at EK Powe Elementary School. Her passion for healthy living has motivated her to advocate for healthy body image standards and healthy living practices through her role as a peer advocate in ESTEEM and the Healthy Living Chair of the selective-living group Maxwell House, respectively. Recently, Anna was honored as a Pratt Undergraduate Fellow and a Grand Challenge Scholar during her junior year and is currently working on a clinically relevant cancer research project. Anna hopes to reach out to other students and communities with her diverse passions, and will take on several more leadership positions in her senior year to do so. She will be a co-instructor for the student-led house course "Technology and International Development." Anna is also a Duke representative on a Fundraising Committee for the non-profit development organization Un Mundo that empowers communities in coastal Honduran villages. She is majoring in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Chemistry and the goal to be fluent in Spanish. The Grand Challenge Scholars program will allow her to write a Senior Thesis in Biomedical Engineering on her cancer research project related to biomedical imaging and optical detection of tissue oxygenation and tumor spectral properties. In the future, Anna hopes to become a bilingual Radiation Oncologist to work with Spanish-speaking communities, and in the meantime continue her diverse passions 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 and Future Business Leaders of America and played the violin in the Louisville Youth Orchestra, All-State Orchestra , and the Youth Performing Arts Philharmonic Orchestra. At Duke, Ga-Young is currently double majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science. She traveled to Bolivia (funded by the Caribbean and Latin American Studies) and Honduras with Engineers without Borders in summer 2008 as a site assessment trip for a bridge and a health clinic, respectively. She spent summer 2009 trying her hand at research in electrical engineering, which has given her additional meaning to academics. In her free time, she enjoys T.A.ing for the Computer Science department and getting free breakfasts every Wednesday!, baking (or anything else that involves creating something out of nothing), and improving her tennis.
	Manoj Kannusamy is originally from Tampa, FL and is pursuing the newly formed Neuroscience major here at Duke, as well as a minor in biology and the Global Health Certificate. In order to pursue his interest in research, in his sophomore year, Manoj joined Dr. Michael Platt's lab, which focuses on neuroeconomics and decision theory in primates, and has been working with the lab since. Outside of class, he enjoys practicing Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, is an active member of the club here at Duke, and has competed in various tournaments. He also plays tennis and the classical guitar. Manoj began training to become an EMT during the spring semester of his freshman year and now currently holds his Intermediate license. He is currently volunteering with Durham County. Following graduation, he plans to apply to medical school in either a traditional MD program or possibly an MD/PhD program.
	Greg Kerzhner was born in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Province of Russia. His family won a green card lottery to move to the U.S. when Grigoriy was nine. He spoke no English, but quickly adapted to American life, learned English, and got into a prestigious college preparatory high school. At Duke, Grigoriy is involved in several activities including the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and Climbing Wall staff. He is double majoring in Economics and Computer 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. During her time at NCSSM, she worked on two intensive research projects: "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. She is pursuing a Mathematics major and a NC Teacher License for Secondary Education from Duke. In the summer of 2008, she participated in the Duke in China study abroad program. In Fall 2008, she was in NYC as part of the Duke in New York Arts and Media Program. In the city, she did an internship at the children's television production company Little Airplane Productions and also created a hypothetical restaurant business plan. In spring 2009, Pam took semester off to work full-time as an intern at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. In the summer 2009, she taught at Student U, a summer enrichment program for Durham Public School kids. To take advantage of study abroad away opportunities, she attended the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program in Budapest, Hungary in Spring 2010, where she took intensive math classes and learned a lot about Hungarian culture. Summer 2010 brought her to Mountain View, CA for an internship in the Intelligent Spacecraft Interface Systems lab, where she analyzed human eye fixation data on the diagnosis phase of fault management in spacecrafts at the NASA Ames Research Center. She is excited to spend all of her senior year at Duke, especially because she will be student teaching in the Spring 2011 semester.
	Erxin Lu is from Suzhou, China, and graduated from Suzhou High School. Erxin participated in several charity programs in high school. 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 and as a participant in the UNIDO Green Energy Project on the Zhoushan Kobold Turbine, the first tide-generating facility in China. Erxin is pursuing a double major in economics and philosophy at Duke. She has sought out summer experiences that have allowed her to put her academic knowledge into practice. In summer 2008, Erxin worked in CitiBank Pudong Branch. In summer 2009, she worked for Junyue Law Firm as an assistant and was very excited about her first court experience. Now she is planning to apply for law school.
	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 was born and raised in New York. After much contemplation of her different interests, she has finally settled on studying Economics and Chinese... she thinks. Outside of the classroom, she pursues her interests in both Asia and Asian America in her involvements in the Asian Students Association as the Vice President of Academic Affairs and in the Duke Chinese Dance Troupe as Public Relations chair. Within her positions, she has pushed for the establishment of a certificate for East Asian Studies from a Social Science perspective and expansion of resources and opportunities for Asian American Studies as well as promoted awareness of the diversity of Chinese dance. During the summer of 2009, she spent ten weeks in Shanghai taking classes on Business Chinese and interning at Fosun International, Ltd, China's largest privately owned conglomerate.