UC San Diego Biology Student Wins Prestigious Churchill Scholarship

February 02, 2011

By Kim McDonald

An undergraduate biology major at the University of California, San Diego has won a prestigious Churchill Scholarship to study at Cambridge University in the UK next year, one of only 14 students nationwide this year to receive the coveted honor.

Recipients are chosen based on academic accomplishments and demonstrated commitment to a career in science, engineering or mathematics, including substantial accomplishments in original research. Eight of 480 former Churchill Scholars have gone on to win a Nobel Prize.

Leila Haghighat, a senior biology major who will graduate this spring from UC San Diego after completing her coursework in three years, is the second student from UCSD to have won the Churchill Scholarship since the inception of the program in 1963. She will spend the next year working towards an M.Phil. degree in translational medicine and therapeutics at Cambridge University.

“Learning that I had been named a Churchill Scholar over the phone was incredibly surreal,” Haghighat said. “It felt like being in a reality TV show, but of the nerdy type. Cambridge has always been at the forefront of scientific research, while remaining rooted to its historical tradition. To study and work at the convergence of those two is an opportunity that I’m so thankful and excited to have.”

The Churchill Scholarship will cover Haghighat’s tuition fees and travel and provide a stipend. She will also be eligible for a $2,000 research grant to present her research findings abroad.

Upon her return from Cambridge, Haghighat, a resident of San Jose, will continue her studies at the UCSD Medical School, where she has already been accepted as a student.  As a senior in high school, she was named a UCSD Medical Scholar, one of twelve students accepted out of 4,200 applicants for a joint BS/MD degree. She is also the recipient of a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, established by Congress to support exceptional students in science, mathematics and engineering, and a UC Regents Scholarship, the most prestigious undergraduate award in the University of California system.

Haghighat, who has received A+’s in almost two-thirds of her courses, is also the editor-in-chief of the Saltman Quarterly, a student-run undergraduate biology journal that provides students at UCSD with the opportunity to publish their original scientific research. She is passionate about communicating the results of research to the public and has for the past year mentored two high school students at the Preuss School, a charter school on the UCSD campus, who are writers on the Saltman Quarterly. Named after the late Paul Saltman, a UCSD biology professor and former vice chancellor who died in 1999, the Saltman Quarterly (http://sq.ucsd.edu/) is one of only two undergraduate biology research journals nationwide (the other is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Haghighat, who has been conducting research and publishing her results since high school, has been working this year to raise funds to distribute the Saltman Quarterly to local high schools in San Diego to generate interest in science and science careers among local students.

At UCSD, Haghighat has been involved in structural biochemistry and microbial genomics research. She has twice received an American Heart Association Fellowship during the past two summers to conduct research at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

A list of this year’s Churchill Scholars can be found at: http://winstonchurchillfoundation.org

Media Contact: Kim McDonald (858) 534-7572; kmcdonald@ucsd.edu