 |  |
Harvard's Katherine Thurber Earns Fulbright Scholarship
Courtesy of Harvard Athletc Communications
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Senior Katherine Thurber of the Harvard women's soccer team as been honored as a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, it was announced this month.
Thurber, a native of Madison, Wis., and a psychology concentrator, is a student in social/cognitive neuroscience and global health/health policy and the inaugural U.S. winner of the Anne Wexler Australian-American Studies in Scholarships in Public Policy. The Australian Government's Australia Awards program honors one scholar from Australia and one from the United States annually for this prestigious new award.
"Malnutrition is a global epidemic, with more deleterious effects than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined," Thurber said. "This past summer, I saw the devastating impact of malnutrition firsthand, at a hospital in Rukungiri, Uganda, and gained an understanding of the magnitude of the problem."
Thurber will use her Anne Wexler Scholarship to undertake a Master of Philosophy at the ANU Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, studying malnutrition among Aboriginal Australians.
"Malnutrition is a critical issue facing Indigenous people in many countries, and further research in this area could lead to vast improvements in health outcomes," Thurber continued.
Thurber gained experience with the issue in the summer of 2010 at a rural hospital in Rukungiri, Uganda, where she worked with fellow Harvard students to establish a malnutrition treatment program.
"Through coursework and research at ANU, I will build upon the knowledge of malnutrition that I have gained through my work in Uganda. In addition, I hope that the study of malnutrition among the Aboriginal Australian population will provide me with insight into the nutritional problems faced within populations in the United States, such as the Inuit and the Native Americans."
Thurber, who is slated to graduate from Harvard next month, has been the winner of several other prestigious awards during her time in Cambridge. She has been honored as the co-President of the Harvard Global Hunger Initiative, and the recipient of a David Roux Global Health Travel Grant, a Harvard Committee on Human Rights Summer Scholar Award, AmeriCorps Student Leader in Service Award, and a Herchel Smith Harvard Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship.
