Rhodes Scholar Singh Adds NIH OxCam Scholarship to Accolades

After becoming Northeastern’s second Rhodes Scholar, Kritika Singh COE’20 knew that the University of Oxford would be the next destination on her educational journey. Now, though, her plans have taken more specific shape as Kritika has been named a National Institutes of Health Oxford-Cambridge (NIH OxCam) Scholar as well.

The NIH OxCam Program is an accelerated, individualized doctoral training program for outstanding science students committed to biomedical research careers. The program is based on the British system, in which students perform doctoral research without required formal courses other than those students choose to take in relationship to their own interests. Students selected for admission to the program have already developed a passion for science through engagement in summer, job related, or undergraduate research programs.

In Kritika’s case, this will mean pursuing her Oxford DPhil by conducting the first half of her graduate studies at Oxford (focusing on bioengineering and chemical biology), and then conducting the second half at the NIH (focusing on immuno-oncology), all contributing to a unified, interdisciplinary project. Her goal is to develop technologies and therapies that can be adapted for low-resource settings. She will bring together mentors from the NIH, Oxford, and Harvard for a unique research experience aimed at developing therapies that will allow physicians and researchers to bring cancer treatments to the masses. One of the confirmed mentors on her project is Lasker Award Laureate Dr. John Schiller.

A member of the University Scholars and Honors Programs, Kritika previously earned the Goldwater and Truman Scholarships, among other distinctions.