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Henry Chang Wins National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship
Henry Chang, a senior chemistry major from Honolulu, has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Fellowship that will provide him with three years of financial support to attend graduate school at UC Berkeley.
Chang, a former Hawaii All-State Scholar and winner of a Roosevelt High School Alumni Scholarship, plans to obtain a doctoral degree in chemistry and pursue a career in chemical pharmacology. He chose Berkeley after turning down admission offers from Caltech and Stanford. The NSF fellowship allots Chang an $18,000 stipend in each of his three years of study.
“I am very honored to have received the NSF fellowship because it is a true testament to my life philosophy of how hard work and perseverance are the keys to success and excellence,” Chang said. “It is my parents who have instilled such a work ethic. As refugees from Vietnam, they came to America with nothing but determination and perseverance and were able to go from poor immigrants to owners of a business in the heart of Chinatown in Honolulu.”
Chemistry Professor Phoebe Dea said Chang made his presence felt immediately upon arriving on campus nearly four years ago. “He got started right away and very quickly had some original ideas to contribute to research efforts,” Dea said. “In his first summer here in the laboratory he was already getting results that weren’t reported in the literature.”
Chang is the 16th Occidental student in the last decade to win an NSF Fellowship. He is also a 2001 Cox award recipient, a Gates Millennium scholar and the recipient of a 2000 Goldwater Scholarship.