Emory University will send four outstanding graduating seniors to Scotland for additional study next fall through the elite Robert T. Jones Jr. Scholarship program.
Emory College of Arts and Sciences seniors Claire Burkhardt, Josh Grand, Asmita Lehther and Yurok Song will complete a year of study at the University of St Andrews in honor of the legendary amateur golfer and scholar who attended Emory School of Law.
Known as the Bobby Jones Scholars, more than 400 exceptional students have participated in the program since it began in 1976. The program will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2027 with a three-day reunion in Atlanta for alumni and supporters. This milestone event will honor the program’s remarkable legacy and showcase the achievements, stories and impact of generations of scholars.
An Emory committee selects recipients based on academic excellence, exemplary character and integrity. This year’s cohort was drawn from 36 applicants of the highest caliber, says Joanne Brzinski, director of the Bobby Jones Program and senior associate dean for Emory College of Arts and Sciences.
“Each year, selecting the scholars is a difficult decision, and this year’s pool of applicants was beyond exceptional,” Brzinski says. “The 2026 Bobby Jones Scholars truly represent the very best of qualities of our students, with outstanding academic accomplishments across our liberal arts curriculum, work in our community that has made an impact that will be felt long after they’ve graduated and a demonstrated commitment to make a positive impact on the world.”
Although students may take courses without seeking a degree, all four of this year’s Bobby Jones scholars plan to pursue master’s degrees at St Andrews that build on their Emory research, coursework and community engagement. Their diverse areas of study include public health policy, international relations and diplomacy, mathematical biology and international security studies.
Meet the 2026 Bobby Jones Scholars
Claire Burkhardt
A Robert W. Woodruff Scholar, Burkhardt will graduate in May with a bachelor of science degree in computer science and a second major in Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies (MESAS). These dual majors reflect her commitment to building technical expertise alongside a passion for understanding how foreign policy shapes lived realities.
While at St Andrews, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asian Security Studies to support her goal to become a career public servant. Ultimately, Burkhardt says her work at St Andrews will help her build “a humanistically grounded yet technically fluent understanding of international relations — two methodologies that experts and bureaucracies often fail to integrate.”
Described by a nominator as the type of student whose intellectual curiosity goes far beyond the classroom, the Fox Center Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellow is completing an honors thesis, a biography and micro-history tracing the president of Syria.
Throughout college, Burkhardt has built deep cybersecurity expertise through internships as a software engineer, software supply chain analyst and cybersecurity consultant, including a role at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) last summer. She has pursued advanced training in Arabic and studied abroad in Spain and Jordan, where she interned with an economic development nonprofit and worked on ecommerce and marketing for women-owned, home-based businesses.
In the Emory community and beyond, she has spent almost three years as a Woodruff Scholar Fellow working to strengthen the alumni network for the Emory Scholars Program, build community engagement and serve as an invaluable peer mentor to fellow scholars. Last spring, she interned for the local nonprofit Friends of Refugees, where she volunteers as a teaching assistant for refugees learning English. She also served on the Emory Inter-Religious Council to advance interfaith dialogue and religious literacy on campus.
Josh Grand
Grand has been a star in the classroom and on the pitch as captain of Emory’s soccer team the last two years, with his time at Emory centered around rigorous core liberal arts coursework, leadership of his team and a commitment to foster civil dialogue on campus.
Last fall, the Sonny Carter Scholar helped lead the Emory soccer team to its second consecutive University Athletic Association championship — the first back-to-back championships in program history.
In addition to leadership in his beloved sport and with the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, he is a Benjamin Franklin Fellow in Democracy and Citizenship and a Robson Fellow for Business, Public Policy and Government, the only non-business student in the program. He also studied abroad in Argentina and the Netherlands.
Grand has applied his interests in international affairs by serving as a European policy intern with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and by working to help bring the World Cup to Atlanta this year as an intern in the Atlanta mayor’s office.
During his sophomore year, Grand partnered with a roommate to found and lead the Emory chapter of the John Quincy Adams Society to encourage nuanced political debate among their classmates while promoting the value of liberal arts education and civil dialogue. He also launched a program to educate students on conflict in the Middle East as president of the MEOR Jewish Athletes.
Grand, who is double majoring in international studies and philosophy, politics and law, is completing an honors thesis in philosophy examining the moral and national responsibility for U.S. foreign aid. He plans to pursue a master’s degree in public policy at St Andrews with an eye toward a career in U.S. foreign policy and public service (while hopefully continuing to play elite-level soccer).
Asmita Lehther
A Robert W. Woodruff Scholar and Oxford College continuee, Lehther has made her mark on both of Emory’s campuses, especially through her work with the Sexual Assault Peer Advocate (SAPA) group, serving as president during her time at Oxford and on the Atlanta campus this year.
While at Oxford, she spearheaded successful Student Government Association legislation that required all student leaders to receive training in sexual assault awareness and bystander intervention. She later replicated and expanded this legislation in Atlanta as the SGA vice president for wellness. She also facilitated collaborations between Greek Life and SAPA to create the “Safe Greek” program to prioritize resource connection, survivor support and guidance for discussing sexual assault.
During her first year at Oxford, she led an initiative to increase access to health supplies and over-the-counter medicines, resulting in the health access vending machines on campus where students can purchase supplies. Her work involved securing $100,000 in grants to sustain the initiative.
Lehther will earn her bachelor of arts degree in human health and political science this May. She is completing an honors thesis in political science supervised by assistant professor Kiela Crabtree that identifies how gender binary assumptions in policy discourse affect public support for sexual violence survivors.
She also conducted research in the Immigration Law Lab, led by Jeff Staton, professor of political science and senior associate dean of Laney Graduate School, on the role of rhetoric in shaping perceptions of immigrants through U.S. political party campaigns from 2016-2024. She completed additional research in the Emory University School of Medicine’s Human Experience and Ambulatory Technology Lab with clinical psychologist Deanna Kaplan.
While at St Andrews, Lehther plans to pursue a master’s of public policy degree with a health policy focus, building toward her career goal to be a leader in global health policy and advocacy for sexual assault survivors.
Lehther has already held several internships to gain public health policy experience, including in the Governor’s Office of Georgia and Department of Health, in the mental health and public policy office of The Carter Center, in immigration law with New American Pathways, and as a policy analyst with the U.S. Department of Health Mental Health Technology Transfer Center in its School Mental Health Initiative.
Lehther has also been an Interdisciplinary Exploration and Scholarship (IDEAS) Fellow in Emory College and created and helped teach the sidecar course “Cults and Communes.” Outside the classroom, she serves as a tour guide at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, where she explores how art institutions can act as instruments of hope and healing. She currently works as a docent for the “Compassion: What Moves You?” exhibit.
Yurok Song
As a physics major and division chief of operations for Emory EMS, Song describes his time at Emory as “split between two worlds that seem unrelated from the outside: solving physics problems and answering 911 calls.”
But both, he says, “have been exercises in the same kind of thinking: turning messy situations into structured questions, revising hypotheses as new information arrives, and making decisions even when the picture is incomplete.”
Song plans to pursue a master of science degree in mathematical biology at St Andrews as a step toward becoming a physician–scientist who uses mathematical models to understand disease and improve patient care.
He is especially interested in the intersection between physics and biology, and in applying physical and quantitative methods to biological topics such as neural networks.
Since his freshman year, Song has conducted research in the theoretical biophysics group of Ilya Nemenman, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Physics and Biology, and is completing an honors thesis using mathematical models to understand how neurons in the mouse auditory cortex respond to stimuli. That research has already been accepted for an oral presentation at the upcoming American Physical Society Global Physics Summit.
Song has also completed summer research at Stanford University, where he used machine learning to help make MRI scans faster and more efficient. He presented that work as an oral talk at the 2025 MRinRT international conference.
As Division Chief of Operations for Emory EMS (the Georgia EMS Agency of the Year in 2024), his creative, analytical approach bolstered by his STEM skills has helped transform the student-led unit. Writing code scripts to map call volume by shift and location, Song used the results to modify shift duties and bolster staffing on the busiest shifts, improving crew safety and coverage. He also developed a tracking system for thousands of pieces of equipment to anticipate supply needs and keep trucks reliably stocked.
In the physics department, Song has been a positive force as a learning assistant (LA) for the past three years (including two as an LA captain), providing classroom support and tutoring for hundreds of students. He has also been involved with Emory’s Society of Physics Students since his first year, growing from freshman representative to co-president, and helping lead the chapter, which has received national Outstanding Chapter Awards for the last three years.