“Long-term, I’m really interested in trying to build out a stronger connection between the research that we do in labs and the way that it applies to people in global health,” said scholarship recipient Maya Butani.
Moorestown High School alumna and Princeton University senior Maya Butani has been named a Marshall Scholar recipient to pursue two years of graduate study in the United Kingdom.
Butani was one of 43 recipients selected from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants from colleges and universities across the country.
Overall objectives for the Marshall Scholarship – according to its website – are to enable intellectually distinguished young Americans, their country’s future leaders, to study in the U.K. and to motivate scholars who will be ambassadors from the U.S. to the kingdom, strengthening British-American understanding.
The recipients are chosen by the eight regional U.S. committees. Butani was selected from the New York region, which also includes New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Fairfield County in Connecticut.
“Long term, I’m really interested in trying to build out a stronger connection between the research that we do in labs and the way that it applies to people in global health, and recognizing that social and economic conditions in global health really inform someone’s experience of medicine and of health,” Butani explained.
“I want to incorporate those into the way that we do biomedical research, and right now that’s not often a way that we think about doing biomedical research. We treat biomedical sciences and social and political conditions as two separate things, but there’s a connection between them.
“What the Marshall Scholarship is going to enable me to do is work on connecting those things over two years and thinking about how I see those things connecting in my career, so that ultimately when I go into practicing medicine or doing research of my own, I have a foundation for being able to connect those things.”
Butani is a molecular biology major pursuing minors in engineering biology and global health and health policy. She researches topics across translational science, including plant-based tissue engineering scaffolds and collagen microgels for T-cell therapies. Her findings have been published in academic journals and presented at conferences.
On campus, Butani is a senior Service Focus fellow at the Pace Center for Civic Engagement. She received the Santos-Dumont Prize for Innovation for co-founding Creative Care, which designs solutions to improve health-care accessibility for underserved student communities, according to Princeton University’s website.
Butani has also served as president of the student-run Princeton Biotech Group and Alimtas Bioventures, part of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club. She has also volunteered at Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center and is a member of Whitman College, where she is a peer academic adviser, an Orange Key tour guide and a member of the school’s club flag football team.
Butani also furthers health equity as a Senior Fellow for Princeton’s Pace Center for Civic Service. She founded a student organization called Creative Care, which designs equity-centered health solutions in collaboration with marginalized student communities.
Outside of Princeton, Butani conducted biomedical and immunology research during internships at the Wyss Institute at Harvard and Rowan University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. In 2023, she spent the summer in Cape Town, South Africa, shadowing hospital clinicians through the nonprofit Child Family Health International.
“I’ve been able to explore so many different things at Princeton, but I think the thing that comes to me as the strongest part of my memories is how strong the community that I’ve built there has been through a number of different things,” Butani noted.
“I’ve been able to find so many pockets of people where I deeply belong to those communities and can feel them rally around me both in the good and bad, and that’s been such a wonderful experience, so I’m really grateful to have that to take away from my time at Princeton.”
In her senior thesis, Butani is studying rRNA modifications, a potential target for the treatment of neglected tropical diseases. In addition to her lab work, she is interviewing drug manufacturers, advocates and clinicians to adapt her scientific research to global-health realities.
“I’m really interested in thinking about how we can use biomedical research in the process of creating medications to make treatments that are going to be relevant and applicable for underserved communities,” she said.
Butani will study Immunology of Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. After the scholarship, she plans to complete an MD-Ph.D (dual degree) to gain the experience necessary to translate technologies from the lab to resource-poor environments.
“I did not believe it was true, and I kept checking my call log to make sure that the call was real,” Butani said of the scholarship news. “ … I’ve been in college for four years and now I’m stepping out into the real world, and the process of applying for the (Marshall Scholarship) makes you think about not only what you’re going to be doing for the next few years but also what you want to do in your career.
“So I think that was a difficult part but also a very rewarding one because I got to think about how my passion for connecting global health and biomedical research is going to manifest in my career.”
