Synaptic Scholars
2014 Scholars
Chris Yee-Paulson | Shriya Nevatia | Gavin Murphy | Roy Loewenstein | Zoe Munoz | Garrett Friedman | Anna Troein | Erin Stone | Chrissy Goldbaum | Tamara Masri | Jonathan Wolff | Craig Dathe | Lillian Prueher | Sarah Grace | Taylor Bates
Chris Yee-Paulson is a sophomore at Tufts University currently majoring in international relations with a concentration in international economics. Born and raised in Brookline MA, Chris has been studying Mandarin for five years and has done research on the region in his freshman year of college. Interested in Asian/Chinese affairs, Chris is hoping to use his language and cultural knowledge of China to pursue a career in the government. After working for an NGO and Congressman Barney Frank in high school, Chris transitioned into the defense world in the summer of 2011 and worked for the Pentagon in the Office of Secretary of Defense--Cost Assessment Program Evaluation Advanced Systems Cost Analysis Division (OSD—CAPE ASCAD) doing naval ship building cost analysis for the Department of Defense. This experience has galvanized Chris to explore the defense world further, as it provides ample opportunities to pursue careers in Chinese affairs and government. In terms of non-academic activities, Chris has played the Violin since 4th grade, and as a former Olympic level archer and current practicing martial artist, Chris enjoys shooting whenever he can and is a competing member of the Tufts Tae Kwon Do team with a background in both sport and military martial arts.
Shriya Nevatia is a member of the Class of 2014 from Queensbury, New York. Although she has not yet declared a major, from a very young age, Shriya’s favorite school subjects have been Math and English. Through summer and college experiences, she also developed an interest in the Social Sciences and Statistics. In addition to these academic interests, Shriya is passionate about many art forms. Outside of school, she has practiced various styles of dance (including Classical Indian Bharatnatyam, Bollywood, Ballet, Jazz, and Tap) since age 3. She played piano for 5 years and flute/piccolo for 6, and attended a summer visual arts program at a local museum for five summers. In addition, she has always enjoyed writing poetry and short fiction. She absolutely loves collecting and reading magazines (everything from Time to Vogue to Wired) and books. Shriya has found new interests in cooking, film, and design in the past few years, and is always expanding her artistic knowledge and experience. Shriya is also very interested in education, particularly curriculum design and educational theory. From 10th-12th grade, she was the only student on multiple strategy teams for the Queensbury School District. She founded the World Culture Club in her sophomore year, and later created a lesson about respecting diversity in school that she taught to fifteen fourth and fifth grade classrooms. She was also a lesson leader in National Coalition Building Institute respect workshops that included participants from three different school districts of different ages and backgrounds. She taught a beginner classical Indian Dance class each week in 11th and 12th grade, following the completion of her graduation performance, called an Arangetram. In the summer of 2011, she taught middle school science with Breakthrough Cambridge for 8 weeks. At Tufts, Shriya’s extracurricular activities have focused on the arts. She is on the Tamasha fusion dance team and Pulse classical dance team. In the fall of her freshmen year, she was Assistant Choreographer for the Over the Rainbow 2010 production. She was also Art Director for the 2011 TASA Culture Show. Shriya is often changing her future plans, but for now she hopes to channel her interests into a career in Education (Research & Curriculum Design) or Business (Marketing & Advertising).
Gavin Murphy was born and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado in the shadow of Pikes Peak. He attended William J. Palmer High School and completed his International Baccalaureate studies, earning a high school and an IB diploma. He then studied mechanical engineering and cultural anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder for a year before transferring to Tufts University for the Fall of 2011. Gavin received active leadership experience at CU through the President’s Leadership Program and the Engineering Honors Program. Gavin coaches youth soccer after playing competitively for 14 years and plays competitive Ultimate Frisbee for a Colorado Springs adult club team, the University of Colorado team, and the Colorado Youth National Team. Gavin will continue his studies in Mechanical Engineering at Tufts along with conducting Biomedical engineering research, playing for the Tufts ultimate team, and taking part in Synaptic Scholars.
Roy Loewenstein is a Sophomore at Tufts who is currently considering a major in either Political Science, Environmental Science, or Psychology. He went to a performing arts high school in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland where he first studied 35mm photography and drawing before switching into the acting program. At Tufts he is a member of the club soccer team, Tufts TURBO breakdancing crew, and hopes to become more involved with the Tufts Energy Forum and Institute for Political Citizenship. He also enjoys movies, hip hop music, the Baltimore Ravens, U.S. politics, soccer, tennis, pizza, traveling, and blizzards, among other things. He was a member of the Institute for Global Leadership's 2010-2011 Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) colloquium, Our Nuclear Age: Peril and Promise, which focused on nuclear issues. This past summer he spent 4 weeks in Nairobi, Kenya studying the Matatu bus system during an internship with Columbia University's Center for Sustainable Urban Development.
Zoe Munoz is a Los Angeles native and member of the Tufts Class of 2014. An American Studies and Latin American Studies major, Zoe’s areas of academic interest and intrigue lie in the intersecting spaces between race, gender, and ethnicity in the United States and beyond. A Synaptic Scholar, Zoe is also a member of the Tufts University SPEAC Program, the Latino Student Representative for Tufts TCU Senate, a Board member of the Experimental College, an intern at the Tufts Women’s Center, and an active member of the Tufts University Association of Latin American Students (ALAS). She previously worked for the Tufts University chapter of the JumpStart Program, a year long service program with AmeriCorps. which provided her the opportunity to work alongside her fellow Tufts students to introduce local Somerville preschoolers to the basics of reading and writing.
As a high school student, Zoe had the opportunity to attend the St. Albans School of Public Service at the St. Albans School in Washington D.C. This six week academic program introduced Zoe to the world of “public service” in all of its many forms. She learned about American and International politics, was exposed to the importance of military and non-profit work, and enjoyed the intellectual benefits of the case study method in analyzing and solving both foreign and domestic issues. Zoe’s passion for public service, cultivated at St. Albans, was put to further use during the summer of 2010 while she interned at the Los Angeles Center for Law and Justice, a non-profit legal aide firm in East L.A. She worked during the Center’s biweekly Eastside Housing Rights Clinic, where she was able to assist the Center’s lawyers during their client intakes, through which she learned about the complexities and barriers that prevent low income and immigrant communities from enjoying fair and equal access to housing in East Los Angeles.
Currently, Zoe is the Redistricting Program Intern at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a national Latino Civil Rights non-profit organization. Her work involves researching Latino Communities throughout California and conducting outreach to members of those communities in order to involve Latinos in the redistricting process currently taking place in California. While interning, Zoe is also conducting research on L.A. street art. She first became interested in Mexican and Chicano/a muralism during a high school trip to Mexico City, where she was inspired and captivated by the larger than life works of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Frida Kahlo, and Rufino Tamayo. That trip prompted her to research the connections between those prolific Mexican artists and work by artists in the Mexican diasporic communities of East L.A. Her current research goes deeper, focusing on gender expression in Chicano and Chicana murals, and involves travel all over L.A. County, documenting the street art she finds and conducting interviews with artists, community members, and academics in the fields of Chicano and Latino Studies.
Garrett Friedman is currently a rising sophomore at Tufts University studying Biochemistry. The descendant of two holocaust survivors, Garrett has devoted himself to the fields of human rights and development. He is an active leader of the Tufts Institute for Global Leadership sustainable development group BUILD, Building Understanding through International Leadership and Development, working primarily with ex-combatant community members in Guatemala. This summer Garrett is working as an Oslo Scholar in Toronto side-by-side with the 2010 nobel peace prize nominee Dr.Izzeldin Abuelaish, known by foreign media as the "Gaza Doctor" to promote the growth of the Daughters for Life Foundation as well as participate in biological research on the emerging field of hate studies. Garrett has worked for three years in biochemistry having conducted bronchoalveolar stem cell projects with Harvard Medical School and olfactory progenitor cell research at Tufts Medical School. While the two fields of pharmaceutical research science and sustainable development seem disparate Garrett hopes to combine the two in his education as well as in practice, in 2012 Garrett plans on beginning a research project in Latin America focusing on the distribution and acquisition of drugs as carried out by ex-combatants. Garrett continues to study at the Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences planning to graduate in 2014 to attend medical school.
Anna Troein is an International Relations and Art History major in the Class of 2014. Anna grew up in the United Kingdom in a Swedish family. Growing up in a bilingual environment, Anna is part of a growing generation of multi-cultural individuals. She attended an international school from the age of 6, learning the importance of trying to understand the viewpoints and cultures of others. Throughout high school, Anna was actively involved in community service as a teacher's assistant in art classes and the library as well as travelling each year to Romania to work with Romanian orphans. In Model United Nations, Anna pursued a passion for debate and diplomacy which, along with her international background, spurred an interest in international affairs that led Anna to also study a course in law and take part in the International Court of Justice. After graduating from high school, Anna spent several months volunteering at the Citizen's Advice Bureau, a non-profit organization that helps give people the information and advice.
Anna spent a year at Chelsea College of Art and Design, part of the University of Arts London, to obtain a foundation diploma in Art and Design. She is an avid painter but also developed an interest in photography during her time there. Anna hopes to one day work with art and spent the summer of 2010 working as a tour guide at Saint Eustache, Paris and in the summer of 2011 interning at Bonhams & Butterfields Auction house in their London office.
At Tufts, Anna has become involved with a variety of activities. She lives in the Arts Haus to pursue her artistic passions, whilst taking part in Exposure to help develop her photography skills. Anna is involved in the Tufts Crew team, the IR DLC and board member of CAFE. She has also been part of the LUX China Care Fashion Show and IR Core Forum during her time at Tufts.
Erin Stone is from Santa Barbara, California. Though she has not yet decided on a major, she is exploring Middle Eastern studies and Environmental Studies, as well as considering a minor in Communications and Media Studies. In her first year at Tufts she enjoyed such diverse courses as film photography, and even an EMT class. She is a varsity soccer player for Tufts and a member of Exposure.
This past summer Erin interned for a local Santa Barbara online newspaper, Noozhawk, which gave her first hand experience with the current trend in on line news reporting and allowed her to gain professional experience in interviewing, research, news writing and other aspects of journalism, her current career choice.
While attending Laguna Blanca High School, she created two books of original photography and writing: Reflections, which was inspired by a volunteer trip to Russia in 2008, and Becoming, about wisdom gained from her interviews with elderly Santa Barbara residents of a local retirement community. Erin was also editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper, The Fourth Estate.
Erin looks forward (as of now) to a career in journalism and photography. She has also always enjoyed volunteering and community service, and hopes to continue to have both as a large part of her life. In her free time, Erin enjoys running, kickboxing, surfing, time with friends and family, travel, and anything else involving adventure, people, and the outdoors.
Chrissy Goldbaum is a rising sophomore from Bethesda, Maryland majoring in International Relations with a concentration in International Security. Her interest in social justice issues began in her junior year of high school when she became involved with the organization Invisible Children with whom she worked on a lobby campaign for a bill regarding the LRA and Northern Uganda. In the following two years she traveled to South Africa, Rwanda and Tanzania where she worked in community centers, rural health clinics and a special needs schooled; learned all she could about development, genocide, and transitional justice; and attempted to pick up some Kinyarwanda and Swahili. Each of these experienced furthered she interest in international development and post-conflict resolution, which led her to become an active leader and Monitoring and Evaluation point person for the IGL group BUILD, a collaborative rural development organization working with resettled combatants in Guatemala, as well as rural communities in Tamil Nadu, India.
Tamara Masri was born in Washington D.C, but when she was six years old her father decided move the family to his birthplace in the Palestinian Territories. With the exception of a year abroad at the George School in Pennsylvania her sophomore year of high school, Tamara grew up in the West Bank. Between learning Arabic, making kites, and dodging the occasional bullet, she had a relatively normal childhood. Being immersed in American culture her sophomore year broadened her interests to things she had never heard of in Palestine; things like filmmaking, farmers’ markets, and Bob Dylan.
Upon returning to Palestine, she became involved in a grassroots initiative called "Sharaka" to support local Palestinian agriculture and advocate for food awareness. Tamara hopes to apply the knowledge and experience she gains abroad within Palestine, in order to give back to the community that gave her so much.
Though she still has not declared a major, she has always known that she would not major in International Relations. Tamara keeps herself busy by experimenting with all the academic and cultural wonder the collegiate experience has to offer. This semester she took Biological Anthropology, Intro to Yiddish Culture, Economics, Rational Choice and Snowboarding. In her free time Tamara enjoys riding bikes, reading David Sedaris, and eating good hummus.
Jonathan Wolff is a rising sophomore majoring in Quantitative Economics. His academic interests lay predominantly in the field of Economics, political philosophy, and psychology/neuroscience.
Craig Dathe is a member of the Class of 2014, studying literature and history. He was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he developed a voracious appetite for all forms of creative expression. He composed his first original piece of fiction at the age of ten, and spent his middle-school years writing and illustrating a series of short graphic novels. In high school he ran varsity cross country, played ultimate Frisbee, wrote for his high school and county newspapers, earned his Eagle Scout badge, and played guitar and sang in a number of music groups. On the strength of his fiction work, Craig was awarded acceptance to creative writing programs at the California College of the Arts, Bard College and the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he first began to take seriously his craft and its greater effects. His high school English faculty awarded him a scholarship for creativity upon graduation.
Craig has elected to dedicate his time at Tufts to the exploration and promotion of pluralism and creative expression. In his freshman year he worked on the staffs of four different student journals, helping to publish work of great scope and variety. He himself was published six times in the course of that year in both English and Spanish, including a featured piece in the literary issue of the Tufts Observer. One of his published works was interpreted for the stage by the Bare Bodkin Theater Company during his second semester. Through these experiences Craig developed a better appreciation of the necessity for diverse and vigorous creative voices in any given community. In his sophomore year he will seek to create the best arena possible for those voices in the Tufts community to interact and collaborate, using as a platform his recent appointment as an editor-in-chief of the Tufts literary journal. In his own work he will continue to hone his skills and experiment across the boundaries of form and genre.
In his spare time Craig runs, reads, plays guitar, tutors his peers as a Writing Fellow, DJs at WMFO and daydreams about being a street artist.
Lillian Prueher is a member of the Synaptic Scholars class of 2012 from Highland Park, IL. Though she entered Tufts as a pre-med student, during her sophomore year, Lillian focused her interest in medicine on patient care and how different cultures approach healthcare. She left pre-med, appealed to the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Tufts for the opportunity to design her own major and is now pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Cultural Studies of Medicine. In the future, Lillian hopes to have a career in academics and to conduct research in the field of medical anthropology.
Since beginning her time at Tufts, Lillian consistently strives to integrate her interests in medicine with her passions for studying Chinese language and culture. She began studying Mandarin 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, studied how the portrayal of medicine and health in modern Chinese literature relates to the way these concepts are approached by society at large, and traveled extensively in China and South Korea. Through these and other experiences, Lillian became increasingly aware of both the extent and significance of the divides between American and Chinese attitudes toward palliative care.
Lillian is currently planning to write her undergraduate thesis on end-of-life healthcare and doctor-patient relations within the Chinese healthcare system. After receiving both an Anne E. Borghesani Memorial Prize as well as a research grant from the IGL, Lillian returned to China during the summer of 2011 to interview and shadow physicians in two Chinese cities in an effort to understand how they approach both their work and their patients.
While at Tufts, Lillian goes to as many lectures and film screenings around Boston as she can and is part of the team of students responsible for organizing the Tufts Idea Exchange. In the past, she has lived in the Tufts Chinese House and participated in a wide array of student activities including, among others, Tufts Hillel Scholars and the Chinese department's One-With-One Program. Lillian also served for a year as secretary of the Tufts Russian Circle and attended a JDC-sponsored trip to a Jewish community in Mumbai, India in early June, 2010.
Sarah Grace Although she is a Philosophy major pursuing a Film Studies minor, Sarah has spent considerable time in Tufts' Japanese, psychology, German, and English departments as a means to her creative and intellectual ends. Aside from a general passion for storytelling in all its forms, including the languages and cultural lexicons employed by it, her focus thus far has been exploring the intersections between fantasy, reality and mental illness. She recently completed two short stories and has 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 plans to make into a feature-length film during her remaining time at Tufts.
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 science, different cultures, 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, watch movies, and draw. Sarah attended the Buffalo Seminary high school, where she was a leader in both its literary and artistic communities. During high school she also won state and national rowing championships with her four. These years cemented her long-time love of folklore and mythologies from all cultures, especially Germany and Japan, and also her appreciation for classic and international films.
While at Tufts Sarah has added two more languages to her repertoire, been published in Outbreath (Tufts' Literary magazine), tutors her peers as a Writing Fellow, and has volunteered for Counseling and Mental Health Services. She works for Tufts Telefund raising money for the University, at the Tisch Library Bernstein Media Center, and occasionally freelances as a videographer and design consultant. She has also participated in production internships at Charles River Media Productions, Madison Square Garden Interactive, and VH1. If she isn't writing or working, Sarah can be found drawing, learning about the human mind, watching great movies, photographing friends and local churches, reading, or learning from her fellow Synaptic Scholars. After graduation, Sarah plans to live an interdisciplinary life as a filmmaker, writer, artist, and dabbler in all things creative and intellectual.
Taylor Bates is a member of the Class of 2012 from Williston, Vermont majoring in Political Science and International Relations. Taylor attended Champlain Valley Union High School until his junior year, when he spent a semester at the U.S. Senate Page School in Washington, DC. While there, he served the U.S. 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 Convention as a pledged delegate for Barack Obama.
This summer, Taylor is working in the Office of Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior senator from Vermont. In past summers he has worked at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, DC, and has served as the Executive Officer (XO) to the ALLIES Joint Research Project in Ukraine and Joint Research Project in Chile. At Tufts, he is a co-chair of the International Relations Director's Leadership Council, and a member of the IR Core Forum initiative. In past years he has been active as a Captain on Tufts Mock Trial and as 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.