Synaptic Scholars
2012 Scholars
Taylor Bates | Sasha de Beausset | Allister Chang | Sarah Grace | Yun Luo | Lillian Prueher | Samujjal Pyrkayastha | Ryan Rifkin | Cody Valdes | Jimmy Voorhis
Taylor Bates
Taylor is a member of the Class of 2012 from Williston, Vermont. Currently, he plans to major in Political Science and International Relations. Taylor attended Champlain Valley Union High School until his junior year, when he spent a semester at the US Senate Page School in Washington, DC. While there, he served the US Senate Democratic Caucus and honed a love of American politics. At the end of his senior year of high school, he ran for and won a position within the Vermont delegation to the 2008 Democratic National Committee as a pledged delegate for Barack Obama.
This summer, Taylor worked at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, DC. He also served as the Executive Officer (XO) to the ALLIES Joint Research Project in Ukraine, where he helped lead a group of Tufts, West Point, Air Force, and Annapolis students as they conducted research on post-Soviet military reform. At Tufts, he is a co-chair of the International Relations Director's Leadership Council, and Instructor in the IR Core Forum initiative, and a Head Teacher at English-language classes for Tufts janitors. He has also been active as a Captain on Tufts Mock Trial and a member of the Tufts Democrats Executive Board.
In the future, Taylor hopes to attend law school and work in the national policy process. His interests lie in rational decision-making, good government, and utilitarian ethics. In his free time, he likes to exercise, ski, and travel.
Sasha deBeausset is a member of the class of 2012 majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Entrepreneurial Leadership. She was born in Guatemala of US-citizen parents and grew up in two distinct environments: the Ultra-urban capital of Guatemala City, and on her father’s shrimp farm in the rural coastal town of Salitrios. Her family’s craving for adventure inspired a sense of exploration in Sasha, and she spent her childhood going on extensive family road trips through the highlands of Central America. These long road trips allowed Sasha to see the least glamorous parts of Guatemala and spurred family discussions about social justice, responsibility, and opportunity.
Come high school, Sasha was ready for something bigger; she wanted an opportunity to expand her global vision while being able to explore the core issues affecting the only place she could call home. Through the support of her older brother, Kyle, she got in contact with the Guatemalan National Committee for the United World Colleges. At age 16, she applied for the scholarship, and after a rigorous selection process, was selected to represent Guatemala at the Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong. Here, she would complete the International Baccalaureate in a 2-year residential program where over 80 countries were represented. The experience transformed her to the core, where she was not only able to live in an incredibly international environment while living in one of the global centers of the world, but where she was able to internalize how globally interconnected the problems facing Guatemala were.
Towards the end of Sasha’s two years at Li Po Chun UWC, she was itching to go back to Guatemala and actively participate in areas beyond her realm of knowledge. She decided to defer her acceptance to Tufts, and took a gap year with two projects in mind: to get involved with an NGO that addressed issues of education and establishing a Youth Leadership Movement along with ten other Guatemalan UWC graduates and University students.
The youth Leadership movement, named COLOR, was a great success. Over two years it brought together almost 50 youths from across Guatemala and Latin America for a ten-day conference to address the most pressing social issues facing Latin America today. The youth proposed projects which would be carried out at the conclusion of the conference.
Sasha got in contact with a seedling Non-Profit organization in Jocotenango, Guatemala called “Los Patojos”, meaning “The Little Ones” in Guatemalan colloquial Spanish. In a town where drug trafficking and gang violence has made playing in the park a dangerous activity, the organization acts as a community center for children ages 5-16 and their families to provide after-school tutoring, a safe place to play, positive adult role models, and a free meal. Sasha volunteered as the English-Program Director and eventually became the Volunteer Coordinator. Her experience at Los Patojos was one of the most difficult, but also one of the most rewarding experiences of her life, from which she continues to learn to this day.
At Tufts, Sasha is a Program Leader for BUILD Guatemala (Building Understanding through International Learning and Development) out of the Institute for Global Leadership which was awarded the Davis 100 Projects for Peace Grant, the Tisch Active Citizens Summer Grant, and the Clinton Global Initiative Grant, among others. As a Synaptic Scholar, she intends to research issues of Chronic Malnutrition in Guatemala from the Perspective of Public Anthropology.
-top-
Allister holds an International Baccalaureate diploma from Richard Montgomery High School in Maryland, has passed all official U.S. Figure Skating Association tests, holds a Paderewski Gold Medal from the National Piano Guild, and completed the 2009 Boston Marathon. He has also gone skydiving in Maine and performed at Madison Square Garden. Allister loves to eat, particularly 四川 style home homecooking. His favorite cheese is chèvre and his favorite grape variety is shiraz.
At Tufts, Allister was the co-president of the Tufts Queer Straight Alliance, the treasurer of the Tufts Mountain Club, and assistant at the Tufts Office of the Vice Provost. Allister also sang with the Tufts Third-Day Gospel Choir and the Tufts University Chorale, and enjoyed taking classes ranging from “Flowers of the Alps” at the Tufts European Center, to a seminar on Rousseau, to “Ropes and Rocks (Rock Climbing)” at Metro Rock. He taught piano on Saturdays through the Tufts Community Music Program, tutored students from Somerville High through the Leonard Carmichael Society, and did volunteer work with ENCOUNTOUR in Guatemala. In 2007, the Maryland Board of Election certified Allister as an election official and Allister worked as the treasurer of the Tufts Elections Commission (ECOM) in 2009. In 2009, Allister also interned at the Massachusetts State House for Representative Carl Sciortino, working to protect against gender discrimination. Allister has also worked on farms in Garret County and Le Monestier du Percy through the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) network, and explored Bordeaux and Brussels through the Couchsurfing network. He is a Humanity in Action (HIA) fellow and participated in the organization’s core program in Lyon and Amsterdam in 2010. His work with HIA opened an opportunity for him to work in Paris for an NGO called Bibliothèques Sans Frontières (Libraries Without Borders), where he helped administer the development of the first public library in Kigali and reconstruct the libraries at the University of Haiti after the earthquake. In August 2010, Allister lead a 5-day backbacking trip for incoming freshmen with Tufts Wilderness Orientation.
Allister is studying history at Pembroke College, Oxford for the 2010-2011 school year.
Sarah Grace has chosen to major in Philosophy with a minor in Film Studies. She is currently deciding between pursuing a second major in International Letters and Visual Studies, with a focus in Japanese and German literature, and graduating a year early in order to travel, write, and pursue her passion for filmmaking.
Sarah grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, in a house full of old editions of National Geographic, which sparked a precocious obsession with dinosaurs, different cultures (specifically Japan), photography, writing, and interdisciplinary learning. She was published for the first time at the age of ten and from this age onward did little else but read, write, and draw. Sarah attended the Buffalo Seminary, a non-sectarian private high school and became actively involved in its literary and artistic communities. During high school, Sarah also fell in love with rowing and competed in and won both state and national championships with her four. These were also the years when
her fascination with Japan crystallized. Through independent study of Japanese film, animation and literature, she fell in love with its culture and history. During this time she also continued to pursue her long-time love of folklore and mythologies from all cultures.
While at Tufts Sarah has been published in Outbreath (Tufts' Literary magazine), tutors her peers as a Writing Fellow, and volunteers for Counseling and Mental Health Services. She also works for Tufts Telefund raising money for the school, and at the Tisch Library Media Center. During November of 2009, Sarah was fortunate enough to be chosen through Hillel to attend a conference on European Jewish education in Berlin, Germany.
She is most fascinated by the intersections between fantasy, reality and mental illness, and how this has manifested itself in American and Japanese societies. She recently completed a short story and made several short films exploring this subject matter. She is currently trying to finish one of her novels, and continues to work on a longer script she hopes to make into a feature-length film during her time at Tufts.
In her non-existent spare time Sarah enjoys learning about the human mind, watching great movies, photographing friends and local churches, writing, going on long walks at night, reading poetry, folklore, and philosophy, and of course, learning from her fellow Synaptic Scholars.
-top-
Luo is a member of the class of 2012 majoring in Civil Engineering. Born in Shanghai, China, Luo came to the US after she finished her high school in Shanghai.
Luo participated in the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) colloquium entitled “Cities: Forging an Urban Future" in her freshman year, where she started to get excited and intrigued by the pedagogy of IGL. The outcomes of her incredible EPIIC experience enhanced her personal knowledge, challenged her critical thinking skills and gave her invaluable friendships. There, Luo recognized the importance of interdisciplinary learning and was amazed by this very nature of the Synaptic Scholars program.
As an engineering student, Luo is interested in investigating the complex interactions between engineering and human activities. During the last summer, Luo conducted a research on sustainable cities. As part of her research, Luo attended the Urban Research Symposium on Cities and Climate Change in Marseilles, and visited the renowned Solar City in Germany and two Eco-city projects in China, Tangshan and Tianjin.
In addition to Synaptic Scholars, Luo is a Citizenship and Public Service Scholar at the Tisch College. This year, she is working with Somerville Community Corporation on the Community Corridor Project to engage community members in the Green Line extension planning process. Luo is finds joy in using her engineering skills through active citizenship in her immediate community.
Luo is also the research coordinator for Tufts Energy Forum this year. She helps her fellow students develop their research. When her ‘to-do list’ is empty, Luo enjoys reading newspapers and cooking experiments to explore the infinite possibilities of that world.
-top-
Since beginning her time at Tufts, Lillian has also consistently strived to integrate her interests in medicine with her passions for studying Mandarin and Chinese culture. She began studying Chinese in her junior year of high school and went on to spend the summer and fall of 2010 on an intensive Chinese language program in Harbin, China. During her time abroad, Lillian shadowed a hospice care physician in Harbin and studied how the portrayal of medicine and health in modern Chinese literature relates to the way these concepts are approached by society at large. Through these experiences, Lillian began to realize not only the extent, but also the significance, of the divides between American and Chinese cultures' attitudes toward palliative care.
Lillian is currently planning to write her undergraduate thesis on the differences between the American and Chinese healthcare systems' approaches to end-of-life healthcare. During the summer of 2011, she plans to conduct interviews with palliative care physicians in both the US and China. Ultimately, she hopes this type of work will bridge the cultural gaps and facilitate the dialogues between American physicians and their Chinese patients as well as those between Chinese physicians and their American patients.
In her free time, Lillian enjoys reading classical and modern literature, seeing independent and foreign films, jogging, baking and exploring new cafes, music and cities with friends. While at Tufts, Lillian goes to as many lectures and film screenings around Boston as she can, is an active member of the Tufts Russian Circle, a member of the Chinese House on campus and a long-time participant in the Chinese department's One-With-One Program.
Samujjal Purkayastha or Shayan to his friends is a sophomore from Kolkata, India. He is trying to design a plan of study in Technology, Public Policy and International Security combing courses at the School of Engineering, School of Arts and Sciences and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. This has been inspired by his interest in the intersection of science and technology, public policy and international security; how science and technology influences public policy; public policy influences the evolution of science and technology and how technology can be used to ensure international security.
Shayan was born in the scenic city of Shillong, Meghalaya hidden in the hills of North-East India and grew up in small forest towns of Arunachal Pradesh, another state in the North-East where his father used to work for the Environment and Forest department. At the age of ten he came to Kolkata (Calcutta), a crowded metropolis in East India where he did his schooling. After high school he took a year off to work in Wipro Technologies, a Fortune 500 IT Company, to take some time out to volunteer and most importantly pursue his passion for Astronomy and Astrophysics. He created a community of space enthusiasts called Astromanity (www.astromanity.co.cc) through which he came in contact with some great individuals who shared his passion for the sky. Astromanity was invited to the International Space University, France for a presentation. During that time he also did intensive research on String Theory and wrote an informal paper on a new sub-theory called ‘The O-Theory’. He was invited to String 2008 at CERN, Switzerland to witness the inauguration of the Large Hadron Collider which he could not attend due to a lack of sponsorship. All this experience led him to realize that he was much more interested in the intersection of Science and Humanities than pure Science which landed him at Tufts.
At Tufts and in Boston is where he discovered his true passions. Freshman year he got involved with the Association for India’s Development, a volunteer driven non-profit working for development in India. He spends his Sunday afternoons discussing grassroot projects in India and through AID got the opportunity to spend a part of his summer at a tribal village in rural West Bengal, India where he discovered the true zest for living and how the brightness of human spirit and resilience can overcome the darkness caused due to the lack of electricity or development.
His eclectic interests have given birth to many ideas to which he is trying to give shape. He is trying to use technology for human security through his website NetPACT (Network for People Against Crime and Terror) a social network aimed at empowering common citizens against crime and terror. His experiences working with children with developmental disabilities gave rise to Suswapna (a beautiful dream in Bengali), a hardware-software interface using multi-touch technology to facilitate the education of kids with developmental disabilities; another effort at using technology for social empowerment. He spent the summer of 2009 researching on Computational Linguistics and Bioinformatics at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).
This year he has been occupied with EPIIC and through that the rediscovery of South Asia, his home. Through EPIIC he hopes to spend his winter break in the Indian states of Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh studying Naxalism and its impact on the indigenous people there. He wants to see how sustained impoverishment and exploitation and a total failure of democracy has given rise to an armed rebellion and the way the state is dealing with an insurgency that started as a people’s movement; and how this movement is different from the insurgency in the North-east India, another armed movement of the indigenous people.
In his free time Shayan designs websites, blogs as ‘The Argumentative Indian’ and listens to music. This summer he hopes to work with the Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research India and experience hands on how technology is being used for the betterment of the society in the real world.
-top-
Ryan Rifkin is currently a sophomore at Tufts University double majoring in Community Health and International Relations. Ryan was born in New Jersey and though his entire family continues to reside in the New York metropolitan area, Ryan is pressed to consider himself still from the region due to his years living with other families abroad and on his own within different regions of the United States.
Ryan began his studies in New York at the Waldorf School, a school which fosters a strong, close knit community focused on integrating the arts with academics. Finding this school too small, and desiring to learn more of other cultures and languages, Ryan found a teacher willing to host him in his home and school in Lausanne, Switzerland for the majority of his high school sophomore year. In addition to attending school there, he worked in both a brewery and an HIV testing and educational facility. This facility was Ryan’s first encounter with living and working in a foreign culture, seeing first hand the issues faced by immigrants and issues endured by the LGBT community. Ryan feels this is where his passion for immigrant and LGBT rights began.
Ryan then moved to New Mexico where he received a scholarship to study at the United World College for two years. In addition to working with the Human Rights Campaign in Santa Fe, he, along with his peers, created and taught the first sexual education curriculum approved by San Bernadillo County. He also worked with human rights organizations on the New Mexican and Arizonan borders of Mexico. After graduating, Ryan came to Tufts.
Ryan, now, is very interested in further studying issues of queer identity, immigration and health. In addition to participating in the Synaptic Scholars program, he continues to teach sexual education in inner city Boston 9th grades, works in Admissions and is a member of Team Q, an educational speakers’ bureau for the LGBT center on campus. Recently, he has become particularly interested in transgender issues. Ryan hopes to study abroad in Senegal the spring of his junior year to learn more about perceptions and treatment of LGBT community in West Africa. He hopes to write a senior thesis at Tufts on transgender issues, potentially in immigration and healthcare access.
Outside of academics, Ryan has been fostering his newfound epicurean interest and running, which he feels must go hand in hand. He maintains his love for animals, getting lost, microbreweries and Nintendo 64. He tried valiantly for years to cultivate his love for performance and music, but has learned that he can better fulfill this goal by supporting the arts and admiring it rather than performing.
-top-
Cody Valdes is a sophomore, born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He has been a competitive hockey player for most of his life, a raw vegan for a little more, and now has found his passion in his meditations on life and unraveling the complexity of the world's most pressing issues. Cody is the co-leader of a student research group called the Poverty and Power Research Initiative, which as a freshman brought him to Manila, Philippines to study the modern-day oligarchy of Asia's most corrupt country. There he saw first hand how national elites manipulate political economies and create dire outcomes for an impoverished nation. He was also one of the founding members of the Climate for Peace initiative at Tufts aiming to bring 100% renewable energy to the Gaza Strip in its reconstruction effort and to facilitate peace and reconciliation in the enduring conflict, aptly called Solar for Gaza/Sderot. He was invited to present the vision for this project at the Sustainable Engineering int eh Eastern Mediterranean conference held by Engineers Without Borders International in Larnaca, Cyprus in April of 2009, and plans to travel through the Middle East over the summer of 2010 to build the growing alliance for this initiative. As a freshman, he was also a member of the Tufts Energy Forum, a student group that holds weekly dialogues and a yearly symposium on the emerging renewable energy sector, where he was in charge of coordinating a panel of speakers. He joined the Tisch Scholars program as a freshman, through which he remains engaged in the local community with an organization working to end family homelessness. He also maintains close ties with the drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization he volunteered at during his freshman summer in Vancouver, where he made life-long friendships with formerly homeless and addicted men struggling to rebuild their lives.
This year he is a senior editor of the student publication Discourse and is leading a Tufts team of engineers, architects, and educators to redesign an orphanage in Rwanda to help it achieve sustainability. The Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village is home to 250 orphans of the Rwandan Genocide and is one of the most inspiring stories to come out of Rwanda in the past decade. Finally, he is a recidivist in the Institute for Global Leadership’s EPIIC colloquium, participating in the 2008/2009 Global Cities year and the 2009/2010 year on South Asia. During his first year in EPIIC, he decided to look at the impact that the 2010 Winter Olympics is having on the Downtown Eastside low-income community in his hometown of Vancouver, a topic he has been examining since his junior year of high school. This brought him to the drug and alcohol center in summer of 2009, which in turn allowed him to explore a world and where full-grown men start the long process of discovering their identity and where spirituality is the only recourse for redemption.
-top-
Jimmy is a member of the Class of 2012 from Brockton, MA. He studies Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science in the School of Engineering. Jimmy had his interest in science and the outdoors nurtured from a young age – whether is was going fishing with his grandfather or snorkeling on family vacations. As a member of the Climbing Team and Mountain Club, he may often be found in the climbing gym.
Quite literally, Jimmy is a synaptic scholar – his research interests involve neuronal connectivity. The project he is involved with now seeks to reveal how nerve cells placed into simple circuits respond to electrical signals.
Eventually, he hopes to follow this line of research and his studies into a wider view of a chaotic world – and how, specifically, instances and events come about as the singular result of many others. He very excited about the prospect of studying systems modeling and optimization, quantum physics, and chaos theory.
-top-