Stephanie Lin ’12 Named MIT’s 45th Rhodes Scholar

Stephanie Lin ’12, a biology major with an applied international studies minor, has received a Rhodes Scholarship to study next year at Oxford University. She is one of 32 American recipients selected by the Rhodes Trust and the 45^th MIT student since the scholarships were first awarded to Americans in 1904.

Lin will pursue a doctorate in medical anthropology, with a focus on viruses and infectious diseases and their application in international medicine. A fluent speaker of Spanish and Mandarin, she is active member of the MIT Global Poverty Initiative and has led public health-focused trips to rural Mexican villages where her team assessed dietary issues and worked to prevent the high death rates due to diabetes.

Heavily involved in MIT’s medical community, she has conducted research at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, studying the Kaposi’s Sarcoma virus, a cancer virus that commonly infects AIDS patients. This research built on her previous work at the Chao Cancer Research Center in California and at El Instituto de Investigación Biomédica in Barcelona.

From The Tech: “My experiences abroad really drew me into global health, particularly because there is such a huge disparity in health care quality between developed and developing nations,” she noted. “My interest in infectious diseases ties well with international health issues, because of the presence of malaria and tuberculosis in some developing nations.”

A native of Irvine, Calif., Lin is vice president for education in her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, and editor-in-chief of MIT’s literary magazine, Rune.  She is also the resource coordinator with Health Leads Boston, a volunteer program that works with physicians and health care providers to meet vulnerable families’ needs.