Yale College seniors Isabel Rancu and Karinne Tennenbaum have received 2026 Marshall Scholarships, a prestigious program that fund up to three years of graduate study in any academic topic at any university in the United Kingdom.
The recipients, who are considered among the most accomplished undergraduate students and recent graduates in the United States, were chosen following an intense selection process and will begin graduate studies at top universities across the U.K. next year.
The Marshall Scholarship program was created by an act of the British Parliament in 1953 as "a living memorial" for former U.S. Secretary of State General George Marshall and the assistance of the United States under the Marshall Plan.
Isabel Rancu, who is from Anderson, South Carolina, is completing a B.S./M.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry (MB&B) and a certificate in Data Science. She is a member of the Cohen Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, where she is interested in applying computational methods to better understand the transmission and evolution of drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) in Eastern Europe. She was awarded the Alan S. Tetelman 1958 Fellowship for International Research in the Sciences in 2025.
Beyond academics, Rancu is deeply involved in educational spaces. She is co-president of Code Haven - which provides weekly computing lessons at New Haven middle schools and is Yale's largest computer science outreach organization - and works as an undergraduate learning assistant. She also serves as a first-year counselor for Pauli Murray College, a Spanish interpreter for HAVEN Free Clinic, and senior interviewer for Yale Admissions.
As a Marshall Scholar, she will pursue an M.Res. (Master of Research) in Bioinformatics and Theoretical Systems Biology at Imperial College and an M.Sc. (Master of Science) in Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology at University College London.
Karinne Tennenbaum, who is from Ann Arbor, Michigan, is majoring in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale. A Goldwater Scholar, Darwin Leader, and Young Climate Prize Cycle 02 Finalist, her research experiences in ichthyology, forestry, and ornithology have taken her to Panama and Patagonia. She won the D. Dwight Davis Best Student Presentation Award from the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology as well as Outstanding Oral Presentation from the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium.
She is the founder and executive director of Taking Flight, a Yale-based educational initiative that aims inspire future climate leaders through birding, linking personal connection with nature to global challenges. She harnesses multimedia approaches to capture the diverse ornithological perspectives of students, scientists, teachers, artists, photographers, and architects. On campus, she serves as president of the Yale Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Undergraduate Group and co-president of the Yale Birding Student Association. She is also part of the Yale Ballroom Dance Team, the Yale Club Jump Rope, and is a first-year counselor for Saybrook College and a STEM (Science) tour guide.
Tennenbaum strives to unravel the mysteries of bird behavior and strengthen science communication efforts worldwide. As a Marshall Scholar, she will pursue a D.Phil. (Doctor of Philosophy) in Biology at the University of Oxford studying the genetic basis of partial migration in silvereyes. She then plans to pursue an academic career in the field of avian migration.
