Ramblin’ Wrecks Awarded Marshall, Rhodes Scholarships

Two of Tech’s own will be taking their engineering smarts overseas in 2014, thanks to two recently awarded prestigious scholarships.

Nick Picon, a fourth-year aerospace engineering major and computer science minor, has received a Marshall Scholarship, granted annually to intellectually distinguished American students pursuing post-secondary education in the U.K. Picon, current president of Tech’s Student Government Association and a Stamps President’s Scholar, will pursue his interests in aerospace defense at Cranfield University, where he’ll study autonomous vehicle dynamics, and King’s College London, where he’ll study international conflict. His plans are to focus on international conflict and the prevention of war.

Melissa McCoy, CBE 12, has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, the world’s oldest, most celebrated international fellowship, which she’ll employ to pursue a master of science in Environmental and Chemical Engineering by Research at Oxford University. McCoy attended Tech as a President’s Scholar; as an undergraduate, she founded the Institute’s Enterprise to Empower program and co-founded Tubing Operations for Humanitarian Logistics, a system for speeding the supply of clean water to remote or disaster-stricken areas. Her research at Oxford will focus on issues of water management and purification.

Picon and McCoy follow in the footsteps of many other Wrecks—most recently, 2012 Marshall Scholar Jacob Tzegaegbe and 2012 Rhodes Scholar Joy Buolamwini.

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