Safiya Sankari, a 2021 graduate of Eman Schools in Fishers, has been selected as one of only 100 Rise Global Winners selected worldwide from among this year’s 13,000 applicants. This honor will provide Sankari with full tuition for her entire four years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, among many other lifelong benefits.
According to the program’s website, risefortheworld.com, “Rise is a program that finds brilliant people who need opportunity and supports them as they work to serve others.”
Sankari will apply her scholarship dollars to tuition at MIT, where she was accepted during her senior year of high school. After being accepted at MIT, she took a gap year to pursue research opportunities. During this gap year, while working in Dr. Agarwal’s lab at IUPUI, she created the algorithm for a handheld device that features breath analysis for blood sugar levels. Safiya’s research was presented most recently at the National Chemical Society Conference held in Chicago in August of 2022.
Sankari has also had previous research published, is a National Merit Scholar, a two-time ISEF Finalist, a three-time JSHS Finalist, and a lifetime AJAS fellow. She is a freshman this year at MIT, majoring in molecular biology and computer science.
The Rise Scholarship is administered by the Rhodes Trust, which also oversees the well-known Rhodes Scholars program. The Rhodes trust website at invites Rise applicants to “join a global community of brilliant young people who are passionate about building a better world,” and explains that Rise is “designed to encourage a lifetime of service and learning by providing support which includes scholarships, career services, and funding opportunities to help these leaders serve others for decades to come.”
The Rise website details the specifics of the benefits to winners, which include not only the full scholarship but also technology device packages, access to a network of other winners, specifically-designed leadership and educational courses, career services, a paired mentorship, and a three-week service and leadership summit which takes place at a rotating location globally (last year’s was in South Africa). Additional lifetime benefits include access to Rise partner networking opportunities, as well as the ability to apply for both graduate-degree scholarships and funding for innovative ideas to address local problems.
The 2022 class of winners represent 47 different nationalities, and Sankari is one of only 12 recipients of the prestigious award who hail from the United States. A full list of winners can be found at risefortheworld.org/global-winners.