News

As a high school senior applying to colleges, Onyx Brunner MC ’20 initially wasn’t sure about Yale. Today, it would be hard to find anyone more immersed in the college community than this Chicago native.

Jessica Trinh BR ’20 knows that the heart of a culture is often found in its food. “My parents came to America from Vietnam,” she said. “Cooking and baking were two of the main ways they taught me about our history.” This insight served her well during a recent summer abroad as part of Yale Summer Session in Spain.

Surrounded by growing plants and curious middle-schoolers, Claudia Gaither JE ’20 experienced a different kind of summer internship. “I had done research in a laboratory after my first year,” said Claudia, an ecology and evolutionary biology major. “For my second summer, I was looking for something focused on the environment but outside of a lab.”

Chairman’s Awards presented to four alumni on November 9.

Priya Singh SY ’19 grew up in a household with four generations of women in Far Rockaway, New York. Both her mother and grandmother worked, as a New York City police officer and nurse, respectively, so Priya spent most of her time with her great-grandmother. It was her great-grandmother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis that motivated Priya to become a doctor—and to set her sights on Yale.

“I am grateful for the intellectual environment at Yale that taught me as a student, nurtured me as a teacher and scholar, and allowed the freedom to devote my life to one of the critical emerging issues of humanity.”

Yale University today announced a contribution of $160 million by Edward P. Bass ’67 toward the renovation of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. The landmark commitment ranks among the most generous gifts to Yale and is the largest known gift ever made to a natural history museum in the United States.

Michael Tom ’83 M.D. was recently confirmed as the new chairman of the Yale Alumni Fund Board of Directors. He will serve a two-year term starting July 1, 2018, and ending June 30, 2020. Dr. Tom has served as the vice chairman of the board since July 1, 2016.