Fulbright grants awarded to 14 Johns Hopkins students

Fourteen students and recent graduates from Johns Hopkins University have received Fulbright grants as part of the 2025-2026 award cycle, continuing the university's long-running success as a top producer of student recipients.

The Fulbright program is the largest international education exchange in the U.S. It offers grants for independently designed research projects or graduate study in over 160 countries, as well as English Teaching Assistantships to support the teaching of English language and American culture at schools and universities in about 75 countries. Around 2,000 grants are awarded annually to students and recent graduates from colleges and universities across the U.S.

This year's recipients include:

• Carter Barnett, a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Medicine. Barnett will travel to Israel to pursue his project, "Beyond Medicine: The Mission Hospitals of Ottoman/Mandatory Palestine, 1850-1950," under the mentorship of Liat Kozma at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Outside of his research, he looks forward to volunteering his skills to help administrators of historical hospitals share the story of their institutions.

National Fellowships Program

Learn more about applying for awards and fellowships at the university's National Fellowship Program website

• Ciaran "CJ" Cole, who graduated earlier this year with a bachelor's degree in Environmental Engineering and Molecular and Cellular Biology. Cole will travel to Switzerland to investigate whether commercial nitrogen-based fertilizers promote antibiotic resistance transmission between microbes in agricultural settings, working with scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Sciences and Technology and the University of Bern.

• Alyssa Columbus, a PhD candidate in Biostatistics and a Vivien Thomas Scholar. Columbus will travel to Germany to work on managing and reporting the variability introduced by the multiplicity of analysis strategies in biomedical research by developing systematic guidance for researchers. Her research will be done under the mentorship of Sabine Hoffmann at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

• Sophie D'Anieri, a PhD candidate in Anthropology. D'Anieri will carry out research in Mexico for her dissertation on the environmental and health effects of industrial manufacturing in El Salto, Jalisco. She seeks to understand how decades of contamination and the related health effects have transformed everyday practices of household and community care.

• Sidney Fulford, a graduate student studying International Affairs. Fulford has received a study grant to pursue an MA in Cyber Politics and Government at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Her coursework in data analysis, risk management, compliance, budgeting, and strategy will prepare her to work in international cybersecurity policy.

• Jacqueline Hackett, a DrPH candidate and 2019 MPH graduate. Hackett won a Fulbright-Fogarty Fellowship in Public Health to spend this year at the Global Health Research Center at Chiang Mai University in Thailand. She'll work on qualitative assessment of an evidence-based drug use prevention curriculum that Thailand piloted in 2024, as part of the U.N.'s Strong Families program. Her findings will inform whether the program will be scaled up throughout the country. Hackett will draw on 15 years of work helping to develop and implement the U.S. President's National Drug Control Strategy, most recently as the senior policy adviser at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

• Aashi Mendpara, who graduated earlier this year with a bachelor's degree in Neuroscience and Medicine, Science, and the Humanities. Mendpara will spend the next academic year in the Netherlands working with the Trimbos Institute to study harm reduction and low threshold models of care.

• Samantha Santamaria, who received her MPH earlier this year. Santamaria will travel to Germany to examine harm reduction strategies used in the treatment of substance use disorders, in collaboration with Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

• Laura Schomig, who received an MS in Educational Studies earlier this year. Schomig has received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to support students North Macedonia. Schomig recently completed her service as a Teach For America (TFA) corps member teaching first graders in a Baltimore City school. She looks forward to setting up a pen-pal exchange between her North Macedonian students and a group of American students, leveraging her TFA connections, and, beyond formal teaching duties, volunteering at a local youth center and hosting an American literature club for community members.

• Ginger Trask, who received a BA/MA in History and International Studies earlier this year. Trask will travel to Samoa to study the history of tourism and its present relationship with Samoans working in and out of the tourist industry. She will receive mentorship from Ta'iao Matavai Tautunu at the National University of Samoa.

At Johns Hopkins, the National Fellowships Program helps students and recent graduates apply for Fulbright Study/Research Awards and the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Awards. Representatives from the office closely advise candidates on all parts of the application. Information on Fulbright student grants and the campus advising process is available on the NFP website.