Lara Ozkan, an MIT senior from Oradell, New Jersey, has been chosen as a 2025 Marshall Scholar and can begin graduate studies within the United Kingdom next fall. The Marshall Scholarship, funded by the British government, provides American students with high academic achievement with the chance to pursue graduate studies in any discipline at a university within the United Kingdom. Up to 50 scholarships are awarded every year.
“We are so proud that Lara will represent MIT within the UK,” says Kim Benard, Associate Dean of Distinguished Fellowships. “Their achievements thus far have been exceptional and we look ahead to seeing where their future work leads.” Ozkan, together with the opposite MIT-supported Marshall candidates, was co-chaired by the distinguished Fellowships Team for Career Advice and Professional Development and the Presidential Committee on Outstanding Fellowships supervised by Professors Nancy Kanwisher and Tom Levenson.
Ozkan, a senior majoring in computer science and molecular biology, plans to make use of her Marshall Scholarship to earn an MPhil in biological sciences on the University of Cambridge's Sanger Institute, followed by a master's degree in artificial intelligence and machine learning at Imperial College London. She is committed to a profession that advances women's health through technological innovations and the appliance of computational tools in research.
Before starting her studies at MIT, Ozkan conducted research in computational biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. At MIT, she was an undergraduate researcher within the MIT Media Lab's Conformable Decoders group, where she worked on wearable ultrasound technologies for breast cancer. She also contributes to Professor Manolis Kellis' Computational Biology research group on the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Ozkan's achievements in computational biology research earned her the MIT Susan Hockfield Prize in Biological Sciences.
At the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, Ozkan has studied the moral implications of genomics projects and developed AI ethics curricula for computer science courses at MIT. Through internships at Accenture Gen AI Risk and pharmaceutical firms, she gained practical insights into the responsible use of AI in healthcare.
Ozkan is president and CEO of MIT Capital Partners, a corporation that connects the entrepreneurial community with enterprise capital firms, and she or he is president of the MIT Sloan Business Club. She also serves as a peer ambassador for undergraduate research and is a member of the MIT EECS Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. As a part of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Undergraduate Advisory Group, she advises on policies and programming to enhance students' experiences in interdisciplinary computing.
In addition to Ozkan's research duties, she volunteers at MIT CodeIt and teaches computer science to middle school students. As a counselor at Camp Kesem, she takes care of children whose parents have been affected by cancer.
