Senior wins scholarship, plans to travel world

Senior Hannah Joo, a neuroscience major, was recently awarded the Churchill Scholarship. The award includes a grant to participate in a 10 month program at Cambridge University.

The scholarship grants over $50,000 to study in Cambridge Churchill's College. The students form an intimate, but not overly competitive, group. Furthermore, money is allotted for study abroad or travel expenses, and students can apply for research grants.

At Cambridge, the program allows participants to pursue a master of philosophy degree. Joo will complete a program in psychology, development and neuroscience. Joo also plans to investigate behavioral neuroscience by working with Marmosets.

A strong interest in research helped Joo qualify for such a prestigious award.

"I think the same things that made me want this program made them want me. [Both the program and I] place a heavy emphasis on research," Joo said. "It's hard to set out to win this scholarship. They're looking for a kind of person, and you can't manufacture that."

In her Hopkins career, Joo's love of research had allowed her to discover a type of cell and publish a paper under her own name. Additionally, her work as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow has made her well-versed and independent in the research process. She exemplified this in her personal statement. Unlike other programs and scholarships, Joo did not find it necessary to suppress her own intensity when applying to this program; instead, she allowed herself the comfort of honest expression. Her true attitude about scientific research and discovery made her personal statement genuine.

"They're looking for someone with ‘jagged edges.' They love to see original research, publication. Other scholarships want to see that you volunteered at this and that and more, but the Churchill likes focus," Joo said.

Joo applied to five different programs and chose this one, despite being a Rhodes finalist.

"The program is unpretentious — you can tell just by their website," Joo said, "It's the ultimate nerd scholarship. I was reading bios from past participants, and I thought, ‘These are my people!"

The application process for this program is certainly not easy. Joo gives credit to the Woodrow Wilson program, as well as Hopkins' academics. Both encouraged her to pursue her interests and enhanced her research abilities.

However, the hard work is nowhere near over for Joo. The ambitious undergraduate is applying to MD/PhD programs and plans to pursue a career as a doctor and continue writing publications and essays. In her stay at Cambridge, Joo hopes to spend as much time traveling as possible. On her bucket list are Munich, Paris, London and Switzerland.

Joo is particularly keen to visit the Roska Lab in Basel, Switzerland. This cutting edge laboratory is well known for its progress in gene therapy for retinal degradation, an area of great interest for the visual system researcher. This city also holds personal value for Joo. One of her female mentors was proposed to here, so Joo especially hopes to make the trip.

"Of course, I plan on visiting my boyfriend, who will probably be in Germany," Joo said. "It's a cheesy shout out, but I don't even know how to thank him, he's been so important for me through all of this."

Not only do personal and academic reasons drive Joo's desire to travel but so does pure curiosity. Most of the cities are home to famous labs that Joo hopes to visit. The undergraduate thanks not only her boyfriend but also several aspects of Hopkins for this opportunity to pursue her dreams.

"It's really the Woodrow Wilson program that freed me from the conventional ‘what you're supposed to do.' It legitimized my interest in research, and I was able to do everything I love," Joo said. "My best times at Hopkins have been the times when I'm really engaged in what I'm reading or thinking about, pushing myself, genuinely not knowing whether I'll succeed. It's because of those ‘Hopkins moments' that I was able to become the future self I had kind of vaguely sketched out four years ago."

However, Joo also attributes her successes to taking the unworn path and offers this advice to undergraduates.

"Be yourself," Joo said. "There is a lot of pressure to do all the things you should be doing. But if I had tried to do that, I would never have learned how to do science — how to make a figure, write a paper, discover a cell type — I probably wouldn't be very happy and I wouldn't have won this scholarship."