Mechanical-engineering major ­Nathaniel Sharpe '09 of Canton, MA, placed third in an MIT robotics competition, qualifying for the international design competition Robocon 2007 in Thailand, where his team placed second. As an intern at Apple, he redesigned an iPod for use by paraplegics. An award-winning juggler, Sharpe led a beginners' workshop on juggling for Palestinian children at the Aida Refugee Camp in Israel. He will use his Marshall Scholarship to earn master's degrees in both engineering and engineering for sustainable development at the University of Cambridge.

Physics major Anjali Tripathi '09 of Woodland Hills, CA, arrived at MIT having already proved herself through two internships with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and a research project in the Caltech Seismological Laboratory. President of the MIT Society of Physics Students and a volunteer tutor in the Cambridge public schools, Tripathi competed twice on the TV game show Jeopardy, recently winning a reunion show. As a Marshall Scholar, she will study at Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy and earn an advanced certificate in mathe­matics.