The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected Tuan Vinh, who graduated with highest honors from Emory College of Arts and Sciences this spring, for its Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program.
Vinh is one of only nine students admitted to the PhD pathway of the highly specialized collaborative endeavor between the NIH and the two Oxford and Cambridge universities in the U.K. The 2025 cohort of NIH Oxford-Cambridge (Ox-Cam) Scholars consists of 11 students overall, including those on an MD/PhD pathway.
“I’m honored to join a community that turns fundamental discoveries into therapies,” says Vinh, who graduated with degrees in chemistry and computer science. Vihn also was awarded Emory’s Charles Elias Shepherd Scholarship and received a fellowship through GlaxoSmithKlein to support his graduate study.
“Emory gave me the confidence to tackle the toughest problems,” Vinh adds. “And the NIH Ox-Cam program will let me apply that mindset to help people sooner.”
The NIH Ox-Cam accelerated doctoral program pairs students with two renowned scientists — one at the NIH and the other at the universities — for a single biomedical project. Most scholars are admitted to the program after completing graduate-level study, including 2014 Emory College graduate Jasmine Mack. She entered the Ox-Cam program in 2021, after earning master’s degrees in biostatistics and public health.
Vinh’s extensive undergraduate work at the intersection of AI and chemical biology, however, prepared him for doctoral study that integrates genomics with predictive modeling. His ultimate goal in earning a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biomedical sciences from the University of Oxford is to discover and model biomarkers that could enable earlier diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer.
“Tuan has all the potential, the motivation and the determination to do the hard work,” says Emory chemistry professor Monika Raj. “Now that he is getting the training, he will be able to achieve anything.”
Challenging himself beyond the classroom
Vinh arrived at Emory from his native Vietnam ready for a challenge. He decided on his majors after asking his first-year advisor what programs would prove the most challenging.
Throughout his time at Emory, he packed his schedule with any course he found interesting, including graduate-level seminars and so many biology classes that he qualified for a third major (Emory only allows two). He worked for four years as a teaching assistant and tutor in biology, calculus, chemistry and computer science, and he served as a mentor with the International Student Welcome and the Academic Fellows programs.
For fun, he sought out hackathons and math competitions, where his wins include Best Insight Award at the 2024 DataFest data analysis competition.
In addition to campus activities, Vinh served as a remote intern with three different pharmaceutical companies in Asia. He began computational analyses at 2 a.m., lining up with afternoon shifts in Australia, Singapore and Vietnam before heading to morning classes in Atlanta.
“It sounds a bit extreme, I know,” Vinh says. “All of it got me to see what really fascinated me, which has been learning how science connects to so many different topics and collaborating with people who enjoy that as much as I do.”
Those passions led him to a fellowship at Emory’s then-new Center for AI Learning, leading workshops to show students and faculty how machine-learning tools can accelerate discoveries in chemistry, epidemiology, sociology and more.
He later helped build, test and refine a machine-learning model that analyzed Ugandan schoolchildren’s artwork as part of a longstanding research project conducted by Valeda Dent, Emory’s vice provost of libraries and museums, and Emory School of Medicine psychiatry professor Geoff Goodman.
The model unearthed patterns that could help develop programs to increase literacy outcomes and school readiness, with an eye to cultural relevance.
Dent and Goodman invited Vinh to present the findings — and the model’s future applications — at the Society for Psychotherapy Research conference last summer in Canada. Vinh will be a co-author on a forthcoming paper.
“Tuan is quite remarkable,” says Dent, who plans to maintain their research relationship. “In many ways, he is really the ideal Emory student, who is propelled by being able to learn and deeply engage in a wide variety of spaces.”
Taking research to the next level
Vinh’s work in AI and pharmaceuticals sparked his curiosity about how researchers develop the compounds that turn molecular ideas into medicines. That interest led him to Raj, whose lab develops new chemical reactions for biological and biochemical research.
There, Vinh established a new technique to modify a peptide thought to be responsible for human disease. He then applied his computational skills to analyze how the modifications changed the molecule from a non-disease to a diseased state.
Vinh and Raj are working this summer to complete final calculations, draft manuscripts and write grant applications based on that independent research and related projects. He is also wrapping up other volunteer initiatives, including a data analysis of undergraduates’ opinions on Emory’s chemistry curriculum.
“What made all the difference is that Dr. Raj gives undergrads the space to reach their potential,” Vinh says. “That freedom let me test my own hypotheses, learn from mistakes and drive a project I genuinely cared about — exactly the hands-off, supportive style that research shows sparks deeper engagement and stronger scholarly growth.”
He leaves for the NIH phase of his doctoral study in August.
“I am grateful to the NIH and very excited about the opportunity to do work that has the potential to be useful,” Vinh says. “I really like helping people out. That is my fun.”
Learn more about scholarships
Students interested in learning more about the Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program and other awards should contact Megan Friddle in Emory’s National Scholarships and Fellowships Program of the Pathways Center.
Find out more information or schedule an appointment through the National Scholarships and Fellowships Program website.