Two Rhodes Scholars from New York City

Two New Yorkers were awarded Rhodes Scholarships this past weekend. The Big Apple recipients are Jacob Lemieux, who is from the Upper East Side and attends Stanford, and Kevin Shenderov of Brooklyn who attends NYU.

The NY Times has a feature about Shenderov, not just because he's a hometown boy who attends a hometown school: His brother Eugene, who went to Brooklyn College, was a Rhodes scholar two years ago. The Shenderov family moved to the U.S. in 1990 from Russia; one reason for moving was because Eugene had leukemia, caused by Chernobyl. Now both Kevin will study immunology (like Eugene) at Oxford. Shenderov tells the Washington Square News:

“[Studying immunology] has the potential to save millions of millions of lives. Vaccines are much cheaper than drugs. That’s why I’m so excited. The research in cancer immunology is applicable to other diseases, like malaria.”