Two K-State students finalists for national scholarships

Marshall scholarships provide full funding for one or two years of study in the United Kingdom and are awarded to as many as 40 students each year. Rhodes scholarships provide full funding for one or two years of study at Oxford University in England and are awarded to 32 students each year.

Velazhahan and Wilkinson will interview for the Marshall scholarship on Nov. 13 in Chicago, and Wilkinson will return to Chicago to interview for the Rhodes on Nov. 18.

Velazhahan, a 2017 Goldwater scholar and member of the University Honors Program, is working with Kathrin Schrick, associate professor of biology, to research how dietary flavonoids in plants inhibit some human cancers. He also is researching the genetic factors that caused land plant evolution.

Wilkinson is director of special projects for Open World Causes, an organization that helps support educators in Nepal and Kenya, and provides school nutrition programs and access to purified water for the community. He is a teaching assistant for Introduction to Cultural Anthropology and a member of the University Honors Program. In the 2015-2016 academic year, he founded and was president of RESULTS K-State, an organization that teaches others how to lobby and advocate for domestic and international antipoverty policies.