Atiq wins Gates Cambridge Scholarship

Emad Atiq, a member of Princeton's class of 2009, has been awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which gives outstanding students from outside the United Kingdom an opportunity to pursue postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge.

Atiq, a native of Pakistan, graduated earlier this month with an A.B. in economics and a certificate in applied and computational mathematics. He graduated with highest honors and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Atiq plans to study philosophy -- a subject he explored extensively at Princeton -- while at Cambridge. He is one of 90 students from 32 countries to be awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

Atiq has worked as a research assistant for professors at the University of Chicago, Princeton and Stanford University on projects ranging from analysis of media bias to measurement of health trends in Asia. He was invited by the Canadian research network MITACS to Simon Fraser University in Vancouver where he forecasted online services demand for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics website.

Atiq has participated in international debating competitions as a former member of the Pakistan national debating team and the Princeton varsity debate team. At Princeton, he also was a member of the Triangle Club musical theater troupe.

Including Atiq, 22 Princeton students have been named Gates Cambridge Scholars since the awards were established in 2001 through a $210 million donation to the University of Cambridge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Scholars are selected on the basis of intellectual ability, leadership potential and desire to improve the lives of others.