Two From Carolina Among First Recipients of China-based Scholarship
A Carolina senior and an alumnus have been named recipients of the inaugural Schwarzman Scholars program award, a China-based scholarship modeled after the Rhodes Scholarship and founded by American financier and Blackstone co-founder and CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman.
Larry Han and Max Seunik ’15 are among 111 individuals worldwide selected for the one-year award, which provides learning opportunities with leaders from China and the world through interactions at lectures, an internship program, a mentorship network and travel seminars. More than 3,000 applicants vied for the award; of the recipients, 44 percent are from the U.S., 21 percent are from China and 35 percent are from the rest of the world.
Larry Han
Han, from Raleigh, plans to graduate in May with a major in biostatistics from the Gillings School of Global Public Health and a minor in chemistry. He is a Morehead-Cain Scholar, a Phi Beta Kappa member and an Honors Carolina student who is working on his senior honors thesis on malaria vaccine efficacy. He also is a recipient of Carolina’s Phillips Ambassador Scholarship and the Barry Goldwater Scholarship.
Han’s contributions at Carolina include working with the UNC Great Decision Lecture Series to conduct weekly discussion groups on foreign policy on campus and at assisted-living communities throughout the region, serving on the editorial board of the undergraduate medical journal Corpore Sano and tutoring local elementary and middle school students in math, leadership skills and Mandarin verbal communication.
A nationally ranked teenage golfer, Han says his love of statistics sprang from his love for the links. When a wrist injury curtailed his ability to play at a higher level, he established a clinic to help golfers improve their game using a formula he devised to chart statistical data of their performance. Han spent last summer at Wasserman Media Group with the golf consulting division, designing a method for assessing PGA Tour event marketability. He also spent three months in Guangzhou, China, using biostatics to improve HIV self-testing uptake, which culminated in a presentation at the UNC-Project China Center.
His work as a research analyst at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine led to an NIH grant, which he used to design a “non-inferiority randomized controlled trial” to assess HIV testing in key populations. He has six co-authored peer-reviewed publications, earning first-author credit for two of the publications, and has presented his work at conferences in Canada, Australia and Washington, D.C. This spring, Han is co-teaching a course for undergraduates titled “The Re-emergence of Infectious Diseases: From Cholera to Ebola and Beyond.”
Han hopes to use statistics to help people improve their health outcomes and already has made notable contributions in the treatment of HIV infection and malaria in China and Africa. He plans to pursue the public policy track in the Schwarzman Scholars program and aspires to a career where he can leverage research institutions and industries in the U.S. and China to drive innovative solutions to global problems.
Max Seunik ’15
Seunik, from Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, graduated with a major in health policy and management from the Gillings School of Global Public Health and a minor in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies.
Seunik was a Morehead-Cain Scholar and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa while at UNC. He also completed a senior honors thesis titled “Human Rights Mainstreaming in the World Health Organization: A Comparative Study of Regional Offices,” which has since been used to guide how the World Health Organization’s Africa office approaches health and human rights in the region.
At Carolina, he was chair of the Great Decisions Program, vice chair of the Honor Court and worked in the community to evaluate living and working conditions for migrant workers in North Carolina. He helped develop and implement the UNC Men’s Project — a 12-week experiential education course that brings together campus leaders to discuss healthy masculinity and design campaigns to change the terms of gender discussion. Seunik also played a leadership role organizing an interdisciplinary academic conference, “Who Owns the Arctic,” during his second year at Carolina, and he co-founded the Raleigh Global Shaper’s Hub of the World Economic Forum, a community of young professionals dedicated to local public service projects.
His passion for social justice and human rights began in high school, when he traveled through Tanzania as a World Vision Youth ambassador, advocating for increased youth involvement in development. Since then, he has devoted himself to youth and human rights initiatives globally, appearing on panels at conferences in South Africa, Turkey, Indonesia and Colombia and at TEDxGillings. As global advocacy director of Canada’s premiere youth organization, Young Diplomats of Canada, Seunik also represents Canadian youth abroad. Most notably, he served as head delegate of Canada’s delegation to the G20/Y20 in Sydney, Australia, and negotiated a list of policy recommendations that were presented to world leaders.
During a gap year at Carolina, Seunik spent six months in Rio de Janeiro researching the effectiveness of domestic violence prevention networks and shadowing senior World Bank leadership. He later presented his research at the 58th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. He has completed fieldwork in Rwanda and in Mali.
Seunik leads a research team for Innovations for Poverty Action as well as researchers from the University of Pennsylvania to better understand barriers to local public service delivery and improve government outcomes. He intends to pursue the public policy track in the Schwarzman Scholars program and aspires to more effectively bring together distinct policy actors — like China and the U.S. — to build concerted action on poverty alleviation for the most vulnerable.
Designed to prepare the next generation of global leaders, the Schwarzman Scholars program is the first scholarship created to respond to the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century by giving students the opportunity to develop leadership skills and professional networks through a one-year master’s degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Stephen A. Schwarzman, who contributed $100 million to the program, is leading a fundraising campaign to raise an additional $350 million from private sources to endow the program in perpetuity. The $450 million endowment supports up to 200 scholars annually from the U.S., China and around the world.
Scholars chosen for the program live in Beijing for a year of study and cultural immersion, surrounded by an international community of thinkers, innovators and senior leaders in business, politics and society. In this environment of intellectual engagement, professional development and cultural exchange, they pursue their academic disciplines, travel, build their leadership capacities and develop a better understanding of China.
