Fulbright grants send record number of Yalies abroad
Yale.edu·July 20, 2026
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Yale University achieved a record number of Fulbright grant recipients, with 42 total awardees including 36 recent undergraduates and 6 graduate or professional school students. These scholars will spend a year abroad conducting research, teaching, and pursuing academic projects through the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program.
Thirty-six recent Yale College graduates and six students or recent alumni from Yale’s professional and graduate schools were offered Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards for the 2026-2027 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the highest number of grant recipients in Yale’s history.
These scholars join participants from more than 160 countries who study, teach English, and conduct research abroad with the support of Fulbright each year — as well as an international network of over 400,000 scholars who have earned grants from the Fulbright Program since its inception in 1946.
The large number of grant recipients continues a trend at Yale, which for two decades has ranked among the top institutions in producing Fulbright U.S. Student Program award winners. Over the past six years alone, nearly 200 Yale students and alumni have received funding to pursue graduate study, research, or teach English abroad through the government’s leading international exchange program. Recipients are selected based on academic and professional achievement, as well as their record of service and leadership potential in their respective fields.
During their grants, Fulbrighters (as they are called) meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of their host country.
Fulbright candidates at Yale are supported by several parties. The Office of Fellowships, one office that handles aspects of international and professional experiences, administers the competition for Yale College students and alumni, while the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences administers the application process for Yale students in the graduate and professional schools.
Below is more information about this year’s Fulbright recipients and the work they will be doing.
In her ethnographic project, “Faith and Politics: Political Messaging in Catholic Churches of João Pessoa,” Rosa Alcala ’26 will study how Catholic clergy and parishioners in northeastern Brazil engage with political discourse during the 2026 presidential election and subsequent transition of power. “Focusing on four parishes in João Pessoa, I will examine how priests use religious language to frame political themes, how parishioners interpret and respond to these messages, and how these dynamics vary across theological and socioeconomic contexts. By combining participant observation, discourse analysis, and semi-structured interviews, the project moves beyond top-down models of religious influence to explore how political messaging is co-produced in everyday church life.” The findings, she says, will illuminate how religion shapes civic engagement in Brazil’s largest faith community.
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Audrey Aslani-Far, English Teaching Assistant Award
Since she first began studying Russian as a ninth-grader, Audrey Aslani-Far ’26 has been fascinated with language. “I fell in love with case endings and conjugations, but really with the world Russian gave me access to,” she said. Aslani-Far, who has tutored other students since high school, will continue that work as an English Teaching Assistant in Kyrgyzstan. A Russian major at Yale, she previously studied abroad in Kyrgyzstan, where she became fascinated with the country’s “unique language politics,” including efforts to strengthen the status of Kyrgyz. “This only deepened my appreciation for language’s ability to reflect a country’s history and culture, and I am eager to return to continue studying these evolving dynamics.” She looks forward to helping students “expand their worlds through English while also learning from them and studying Russian and Kyrgyz to broaden my own.”
Estelle Balsirow, English Teaching Assistant Award
Estelle Balsirow ’26, a Kalmyk-American whose ancestors are from the Mongolian region, will be an English Teaching Assistant in Mongolia. She was drawn to the program after discovering “how it created long-lasting relationships and connections to mutually benefit everyone. It reminded me of the symphony orchestras I played at in Interlochen and Juilliard, where people from around the world came to make music. A musician never just plays their part, but also collaborates with other colleagues to create music.” Balsirow, who enjoys exploring the processes of language learning and retention, says she looks forward to identifying “the best ways for students to learn, whether that be singing English songs or delving into the complexities of sentence syntax.”
Carla Becerra Sabrera, Open Study/Research Award
As a Fulbright scholar, Carla Becerra Sabrera ’26 will conduct a mixed-methods research project in Huaraclla, a rural community in Cajamarca, Perú, investigating the roots of early childhood malnutrition. “In Huaraclla, home to over 3,000 people and nearly 200 children under five, the absence of a permanent health clinic means child nutrition largely depends on maternal knowledge, household practices, and food traditions that remain under-documented in national data,” she wrote. Working with the Universidad Nacional de Cajamarca, she will collect quantitative data through anthropometric measurements and caregiver surveys that capture feeding practices, food insecurity, and cultural beliefs. She will also co-lead support groups with local mothers and health workers that will ultimately create visual health resources that integrate biomedical guidance with Andean traditions.
Xavier Blackwell-Lipkind, English Teaching Assistant Award
Inspired to value work in foreign language instruction by his mother, a high-school French teacher, Xavier Blackwell-Lipkind ’24 studied Spanish in school, spoke a mixture of French and English at home, and completed a semester of Arabic at a local university before enrolling at Yale, where he nurtured an interest in the Portuguese language and in Brazilian music and literature. As a Critical Language Scholar in 2022, he immersed himself in the language and everyday life of Florianópolis, Brazil for a summer; later, he pursued independent research in São Paulo. As a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Brazil, he aims to refine his pedagogical skills, preparing him for work in secondary or postsecondary settings as a language and literature teacher and gain a broader understanding of Brazilian culture. Eventually he hopes to pursue graduate study in contemporary French and Brazilian fiction.
Ethan Chiu, Fulbright-Nehru Open Study/Research Award
In affiliation with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Ethan Chiu ’26 will study labor conditions in India’s fast-growing semiconductor ecosystem. “To prevent continued exploitation across a chip industry that has been growing exponentially (due to the AI boom and global reshoring efforts), we must understand existing labor practices,” he said. “For the U.S. specifically, comprehensively comparing semiconductor industry-labor relations worldwide can highlight best practices as the CHIPS and Science Act rebuilds domestic chip capacity.” His project will expand upon other research he has conducted on labor within the global chip industry. “I will examine how workers’ well-being is affected by subcontracting chains, recruiting practices, dormitory housing, occupational safety and health, and federal/state policies,” he says.
Ilan Eisenberg, Fulbright MA Degree Award
At the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies program at Hebrew University in Israel, Ilan Eisenberg ’25 plans to continue research he conducted as an undergraduate on 20th century Ottoman Jewish political history and study Arabic. At Yale, he wrote his thesis on the impact of Ottoman nationalism and Zionism on the political thought of Salonica’s Jews after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, drawing on Hebrew, Ladino, and French texts. At Hebrew University, he will expand that research, examining sources from Ottoman Palestine to better contextualize later Jewish and Arab political movements in Israel.
Emiliano Gómez, English Teaching Assistant Award
As an English Teaching Assistant in Spain, Emiliano Gómez ’26 aims to build cross-cultural connections and continue nurturing a familial reconnection to Spanish, which was severed when his grandparents were not allowed to speak the language in school after emigrating from Mexico to New Mexico. Recognizing what had been lost, his parents enrolled him in a dual-language school, a decision that he says has transformed his life. Studying Spanish has allowed him to study abroad, immerse himself in new cultures, and build lasting relationships rooted in curiosity and empathy, he wrote. Through the Fulbright experience he aims to continue this work and “to forge connections across culture and return with a deeper, more empathetic understanding.”
Britney Gramajo Barrios, English Teaching Assistant Award
As an English Teaching Assistant in Brazil, Britney Gramajo Barrios ’26 aims to bridge her love for language and, more broadly, education “through cultural immersion in a place that already feels like my second home.” At Yale, she immersed herself in the pre-law and legal aid community, including the Yale Undergraduate Legal Aid Association, a student organization that promotes human rights through legal empowerment on and off campus. She says she fell in love with Brazil, and the Portuguese language, while studying as a Yale sophomore. “The beauty of Brazil lies in its embrace for life, from everyday interactions such as futebol on the beach to the festas juninas celebrating the harvest season,” she wrote.
Kathryn Hemmer, Open Study/Research Award
As a Fulbright scholar, Kathryn Hemmer ’25 will conduct research addressing two central themes related to armed conflict in Ethiopia. The first focuses on conflict early warning, and the second will address emerging technology in warfare and developments to international humanitarian law. While her work will be based at the Addis Ababa School of Law, she will also conduct research in conjunction with an Ethiopian-based security think tank. “I hope that my work will contribute to an enhanced understanding of conflict in the Horn: a region critical to U.S. security, trade, and investment interests,” she wrote.
Ayush Iyer, English Teaching Assistant Award
As an English Teaching Assistant in Spain, Ayush Iyer ’26 aims to help students access the global opportunities that learning English can unlock. At Yale, he saw firsthand how multilingual communication can build trust and stronger communities. Working at the HAVEN Free Clinic, he wrote, a conversation with a quiet grandfather looking for a vaccine grew into a lively conversation after the man learned that he spoke Spanish. “What began as a brief transaction turned into a meaningful conversation; he stayed to tell stories about his grandkids, construction job, and shared novel mental health concerns,” he wrote. “In that moment, multilingual communication opened doors to a fundamental need, built on trust and mutual understanding.”
Catherine Jacobson, English Teaching Assistant Award
Catherine Jacobson ’26, who has an interest in domestic and international educational law and policy, will work as an English Teaching Assistant in Argentina. She has previously conducted research for a lawsuit over inequitable school funding, studied pedagogy and theory at Yale, and developed public health curricula in Zanzibar. Working in classrooms of Argentina will offer her a first-hand look at how funding and curricula impact communities, she says. “Argentina is an ideal site for me because, similar to the U.S., it has a history of strong public education and federalist governance and thus would show me how learning happens under a familiar structure but unfamiliar culture,” she wrote.
Eliza Josephson, Fulbright/Camoes, I.P. Open Study/Research Award
As a Fulbright scholar in Portugal, Eliza Josephson ’26 will bring Portuguese-Arabic aljamiado manuscripts from the archive to digital open-access platforms, expanding global collaboration and scholarly engagement with this multilingual literary heritage. During an eight-month project, she will work in major repositories, including the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Torre do Tombo, Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, and Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa. “Because digitized Portuguese aljamiado manuscripts — Romance-language texts written in Arabic script — remain extremely rare, this project seeks to recover and make accessible a largely overlooked dimension of Portuguese literary history,” she wrote.
Ayelet Kalfus, Open Study/Research Award
Ayelet Kalfus ’25, working with Sarel Fleishman, a professor at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and a global leader in computational enzyme design, will develop GeneRATE, a seminal generative AI model that will enable the design of enzymes that function at specific rates. This, he says, will allow researchers to actualize unprecedented behaviors in synthetic cells, cellular mimics composed from precisely defined molecular components. In collaboration with the Elani Bioinspired Engineering Group, they will use GeneRATE to realize two enzymatic reaction networks with crucial therapeutic implications: biological clocks for drug delivery and synthetic bio-batteries to treat a range of energy-deficient diseases.
Madeleine Keenan, English Teaching Assistant Award
Madeleine Keenan ’26, who has worked to make connections across cultures through learning languages (including Arabic, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and especially French) will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in Senegal. She brings to the role experience as a teaching assistant and English tutor and has worked in library and museum sciences. “I am drawn to Senegal in particular as a place to grow, learn, and connect with people,” she wrote. She also plans to pursue a supplemental service project on menstrual health and education, combining her skills in community health and public service.
Colin Kim, English Teaching Assistant Award
As an English Teaching Assistant in Taiwan, Colin Kim ’26 will work closely with speakers of Mandarin Chinese, among the most prevalent languages spoken by the Asian immigrant communities that he hopes to one day assistant and support as a physician-educator. “I believe that the ETA provides me with the opportunity to share the mobilizing power of English to those with similar lived experiences as my parents and those who desire to expand their linguistic horizons in hopes of pursuing their own hopes and aspirations,” he wrote.
Hannah Kim, English Teaching Assistant Award
Hannah Kim ’26 will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in South Korea. Through her Education Studies coursework at Yale, she explored how structural inequalities shape access to learning, especially for students marginalized by language barriers — and saw the transformative power of reading intervention programs, mentorship, and support for first-generation, low-income students. “I am especially drawn to South Korea’s ETA program for its mission to bridge educational divides, particularly in rural regions,” she wrote.
Roy Kohavi, English Teaching Assistant Award
Roy Kohavi ’26 will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in Germany. As a former Yale Young Global Scholar, he taught seminars, led breakout sessions, and discovered a passion for teaching. He sought a chance to teach in Germany because of his love of the language and his interest in the culture. “Moreover, as a Jewish student with a strong academic interest in Holocaust studies and totalitarianism, I’m eager to deepen my understanding by living where history happened,” he wrote. “A year in Germany would not only be personally meaningful, it could inspire me to teach German back in America.”
Goeun Lee, U.S.-Korea Presidential STEM Initiative Award
Goeun Lee ’25 will investigate how sociocultural contexts influence social functioning and emotion regulation among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as a Fulbright Scholar in South Korea. In collaboration with So Hyun Kim, in Korea University’s Spectrum KU Lab, he will investigate the sex differences in children with ASD through the interplay of neuropsychological processes with various measures: electroencephalogram data and emotion (dys)regulation questionnaires — which can match samples from children with ASD and neurotypical children from the U.S. and Korea — to determine if sex differences in core symptoms and emotion regulation emerge.
Samantha Liu, English Teaching Assistant Award
Samantha Liu ’26 will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in Taiwan. As an English major at Yale, she learned how storytelling can reveal the unique differences between people and their shared humanity. “As an ETA, I’ll teach American folktales to explore our country’s cultural values, while inviting students to imagine and write their own fairytales,” she wrote. Liu, who was also a Yale Daily News journalist and Yale Writing Partner, ultimately hopes to pursue a career in global health and journalism, seeking “to teach and deliver culturally sensitive care worldwide.”
As recipient of the Fulbright Combined Award, Daniel Mladek ’26 will teach English while also joining the research team of Ivana Stiperski in the Department of Atmospheric and Cryospheric Sciences at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. In that role, he will examine turbulence over mountainous and glaciated terrain in the Austrian Alps. “The opportunity of combined teaching and research in Austria is a dream that would not only make me a stronger geophysicist, but a more thoughtful global citizen,” he wrote.
Peter Nelson, English Teaching Assistant Award
Peter Nelson ’26 will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in Taiwan. Nelson, who first studied Mandarin as a middle school student, says he became interested in Taiwan after learning about its community-centered response to the COVID-19 pandemic and then began studying the East Asian country’s health care system. “These moments sparked my interest in Taiwan’s approach to health education and communication, a perspective that aligns closely with my long-term goal of becoming an endocrinologist,” he wrote.
Andrew Nupp, Open Study/Research Award for Graduating Seniors
Andrew Nupp ’26 will conduct research on the Belle II experiment, an international collaboration exploring fundamental questions about the nature of matter through electron-positron collisions, at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan. In his role, he will focus on the vertex detector, which measures where collisions occur, particularly on integrating a new pixel detector, OBELIX, designed to provide precise vertex detection at high-luminosity conditions.
Avi Patel, Fulbright-Nehru Open Study/Research Award
Avi Patel ’26 will examine how environmental factors like air pollution shape patterns of active mobility and neighborhood accessibility in urban India, where air pollution is a daily reality. With recent studies showing that air pollution reduces walking, cycling, and outdoor activity in high-income countries, Patel will utilize time-use data from India’s Statistics Ministry to assess how air quality influences mobility and outdoor exposure. He’ll also use GIS tools to map pollution patterns and their relationship to physical activity across seasons. The analysis will later be extended to examine how chronic exposure to air pollution affects lifetime mobility and health.
Kyle Thomas Ramos, Open Study/Research Award
At the University of Barcelona, Kyle Thomas Ramos ’26 B.A./M.A. will compare how judicial selection systems in Spain and the U.S. shape appellate decision-making. While appellate judges in the U.S. are politically appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, judges in Spain rise through a centralized, merit-based career track. His project will illuminate how selection mechanisms in these two systems influence judicial incentives and case outcomes. As a Yale student, he built an original dataset that traces U.S. appellate judges from 1792 to the present. “My work shows how partisan incentives shape judicial appointments and raises a broader question: can alternative models preserve independence without politicization?” he wrote.
Dhruva Schlondorff, English Teaching Assistant Award
Dhruva Schlondorff ’26 will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in Germany. As a Yale undergraduate, where he was a double major in math and German Studies, Schlondorff completed multiple teaching fellowships, including work in four different regions of the U.S. “These opportunities have given me both a strong pedagogical background and real-world experience working with diverse groups of students,” he wrote.
Etai Smotrich-Barr, English Teaching Assistant Award
Etai Smotrich-Barr ’26 will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in Bolivia. During his time at Yale, Smotrich-Barr hired, managed, and trained a team of organizers on a U.S. congressional race, and then served as an editor for The New Journal at Yale, where he helped student journalists improve their writing. He has also studied abroad in both Guatemala and Ecuador, experiences that helped convince him to become fluent in Spanish and to seek opportunities to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers. “This opportunity will help me continue my learning experiences abroad in Latin America and sharpen my Spanish-language skills, opening up future career paths in multilingual journalism,” he wrote.
Sheel Trivedi, Fulbright-Nehru Open Study/Research Award
As a Fulbright Scholar, Sheel Trivedi ’26 will investigate the logistical and emotional hurdles faced by members of India’s growing diaspora who must manage long-distance care for relatives with dementia in India. Trivedi, who will be based in Bengaluru, India, will specifically investigate the complex dynamics of what is known as the “Transnational Caregiving System” to identify themes that can be used to develop successful strategies that aim to increase well-being and reduce burden for all entities involved. He will be affiliated with NIMHANS — India’s apex institution for neuroscience research and dementia care.
Matthew Verich, English Teaching Assistant Award
Matthew Verich ’26 will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in the Canary Islands in Spain. Verich says he first observed the power of teaching as a kind of service in the classroom of his mother, a first-grade teacher, where he saw “how patient listening, clear explanations, and small, joyful wins change what students believe is possible.” A trumpet player and pianist, he has also used music to help calm others, and tutored English learners “to make new places feel livable.” “Teaching, I’ve learned, is a public act of care,” he said. “Spain is where this work makes the most sense for me. Studying in León showed me how everyday life in Spain is shaped by conversation across languages and regions.”
Ashley Zheng, English Teaching Assistant Award
Ashley Zheng ’26 will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in Taiwan. Through teaching, she has found a way to help others find a sense a belonging through language, much like she did as a child when she learned English as the daughter of immigrant parents. She nurtured these skills and these interests as a Yale undergraduate. “At Yale, my academic foundation in the Education Studies program, work with [English as a Second Language] tutoring, and youth mentorship have equipped me to design inclusive, curiosity-driven classrooms,” she said. “As an ETA, I will encourage students to use English as a bridge for storytelling, exploration, and creativity — while learning from Taiwan’s traditions of community, dialogue, and innovation.”
Other recent Yale College graduates who received Fulbright grants but declined them so they could pursue other opportunities include Lucas Aurore ’26 (English Teaching Assistant Award, Taiwan); Audrey Kim ’26 (English Teaching Assistant Award, Taiwan); Xin Lu ’26 (English Teaching Assistant Award, Taiwan); Lilia Potter-Schwartz ’26 (Fulbright-Nehru Open Study/Research Award, India); Karinne Tennenbaum ’26 (Open Study/Research Award, Germany); and Serina Wang ’26 (English Teaching Assistant Award, Taiwan). Claire Chouinard, a graduate student (chemical & environmental engineering) in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (U.S.-Korea Presidential STEM Initiative Award, South Korea), who requested that her application go through the Yale College application process, also received a grant offer.
