Fang Cao

UMD senior Fang Cao is the first Rhodes Scholar to be chosen from UMD since 1974. The Rhodes Scholarship is widely considered to be the most esteemed academic award available to college graduates. Cao is one of only 32 students from across the nation to receive this scholarship. Cao—who is majoring in biological sciences, with a specialization in physiology and neurobiology, and is a member of the Integrated Life Sciences program in the Honors College—plans to use the scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in medical anthropology at the University of Oxford in England. His long-term plans include a career in medicine and public health policy.

He has extensive leadership and community service accomplishments, and is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. He was the first UMD student to be awarded both a Goldwater scholarship and a Truman scholarship. In addition, he has received a Howard Hughes Medical Institute undergraduate research fellowship, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) intramural training research award, and an NIH exceptional summer intern award.