DKU senior Ege Kaan Duman marks first student from Turkey, Kunshan campus to be named Rhodes Scholar

A Duke Kunshan University senior was named a Rhodes Scholar for the Global Constituency.

Ege Kaan Duman is both the first student from Turkey and from the Duke Kunshan campus to be awarded the Rhodes Scholarship, an all-expenses-paid graduate program at the University of Oxford.

“Although becoming the first Rhodes Scholar from Turkey seemed impossible at first, I am happy to have discovered that perhaps nothing is!” Duman wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing his award, thanking his professors and referees.

Duman, a global health and biology major, plans to pursue graduate study in medical anthropology. He is a Kunshan Government Scholar at DKU and has been a research assistant at the Duke Global Health Institute and DKU’s Global Health Research Center. Duman is also the Director of the interviewer team for MediHealth Podcast, a student-led science podcast, funded by the DKU Health Humanities Lab.

A member of DKU’s inaugural undergraduate class of 2022, Duman plans to use this “unique opportunity” to “fight for health and healthcare across the world,” per his LinkedIn post.

Duman told The Chronicle that he was "extremely excited and honored" to learn he received the scholarship.

"Being the first Rhodes Scholar from Turkey means a lot—I was able to show that it was possible to achieve something like this and hopefully inspire countless students who wish to make a difference," he wrote. "At the same time, I also felt appreciated as many people put their trust in me to go and make a change in the world."

Charlie Colasurdo is Kunshan Report editor and a junior in the second-ever graduating class of the Duke Kunshan campus’s undergraduate program, located outside Shanghai, China.