A Penn student is among the winners of one of the nation's most prestigious scholarships.
College senior Lauren Zeitels is one of 40 students in the country to win the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which grant recipients one year of study and research at the University of Cambridge in England.
Zeitels plans to spend next year pursuing a master's degree in medical science.
The scholarship was established six years ago by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Describing herself as a "good fit" for the Gates Scholarship, Zeitels said that she has a 4.0 grade point average, 20 A-pluses. She is studying biochemistry and chemistry at Penn.
Zeitels is "simply a wonder," said Art Casciato, director of the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, who added that none of Penn's 14 past winners "can quite claim Lauren's extraordinary degree of academic excellence."
And while she didn't get the chance to study abroad as an undergraduate, Zeitels said that she is happy to compensate for this through the scholarship.
A Benjamin Franklin Scholar and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society, Zeitels is also a student in the Vagelos Scholars Program. She has won the Roy and Diana Vagelos Challenge Award as well as the Dean's Scholar Award, which recognize academic excellence.
Other distinguishing marks on Zeitels' resume include an internship at the National Institute of Aging and being co-president of Penn's chapter of Habitat for Humanity.
"Lauren continues a record of success about which everyone at Penn has the right to be proud," Casciato said.
Officials at the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships say Zeitels' award is a good indicator of the center's success in getting Penn students to compete successfully for national scholarships. Since the center and the Gates scholarship were established in the same year, Casciato views Penn's past 14 wins as a "good start."
"In 100 years, when Gates will be mentioned in the same breath as the Rhodes, Penn will have been a major player in the competition right from the beginning," Casciato said.
Gates scholarships A look at how many Penn and its peers received: - Penn: 1 - Harvard: 3 - Northwestern: 4 - Princeton: 5 - Yale: 3 - MIT: 3 - UC Berkeley: 3 Source: College newspapers
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