Two Duke University students and one Duke Kunshan University student named Schwarzman researchers, a program that funds a year of study in Beijing.

They are among 151 academics who will begin the program in August 2022.

Elders Jessica Edelson and Jessie Xu are Durham Campus recipients. Wanying He, a senior first-class undergraduate student at Duke Kunshan University, became the first DKU student to be named a Schwarzman Fellow.

Academics develop leadership skills through a funded one-year Masters in Global Affairs, designed to empower future leaders of the 21st century to engage with China. Fellows are selected on the basis of their leadership potential, entrepreneurial spirit and desire to understand other cultures.

Students study at Tsinghua University in Beijing and live at Schwarzman College, a state-of-the-art facility specially designed to promote community. Classes are taught in English, although all Schwarzman Fellows are taught in Mandarin.

During their one-year scholarship, students will commit to developing a better understanding of China and its place in international affairs by attending lectures, travel, cultural immersion, and a “deep dive” into a subject of their choice.

Edelson, a Robertson scholar from Blue Bell, Pa., Will graduate in May with specializations in political science and visual and media studies, as well as a certificate in information science. At Duke, she served as president of Duke Cyber, a student group focused on cybersecurity, geopolitics, and governance, and led the cyberpolitics team at international competitions.

She was also part of a team at Bass Connections researching engineering ethics, worked at the Sanford Tech Policy Lab, and led the Project Edge entrepreneurship program.

With interests at the intersection of technology and politics, Edelson has worked as a civic designer in rural North Carolina, a Nokia member, and an intern at the People-Centered Internet. She co-wrote an award-winning technology policy column for the Duke Chronicle and is an undergraduate representative on the Duke board of directors.

After his Schwarzman tenure, Edelson aspires to pursue a career in foreign policy and international security, with an emphasis on cyber and emerging technologies.

Xu, from West Hartford, Connecticut, will graduate in May with a degree in public policy and a minor in economics. As the co-founder of a campus partnership with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, Xu advocates for the expansion of critical economic education on campus to study systemic social change.

Xu is preparing for a future career in financial regulation and urban economic development. In this capacity, she has pursued research projects since the 2008 financial crisis through Bass Connections, until now her graduation thesis on affordable housing finance with Self-Help Credit Union.

She was a Hart Fellow and interned with the Federal Reserve. Xu is now an intern on the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

She is a partner of the Duke Impact Investing Group, where she manages one of the largest undergraduate funds in the country. Xu has also performed in Monologues Me Too and is a resident advisor.

She eventually hopes to attend law school, where she will focus on financial regulation and business law.

Wanying He, from Liuyang City in Hunan Province, China, will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in data science next summer.

She championed interdisciplinary collaboration throughout her liberal arts training at Duke Kunshan. Along with his studies in data science, his research and extracurricular activities include the exploration of topics in the natural and applied sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

She is the founding co-director of the DKU Interdisciplinary Knowledge Network Lab, a project co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Center (HRC) and the Data Science Research Center that studies knowledge architecture, meta-knowledge, epistemology and others. areas.

It recruited students and professors from several disciplines to develop research projects around the theme of networked knowledge. She has also led teams to map, visualize and analyze the models of knowledge produced and shared at DKU, and has trained the next generation of student researchers who will continue the initiative.

Duke students and alumni can receive support for opportunities such as the Schwarzman Scholarship from the Competitive National Scholarships team at theOffice of University Fellows.