Young Alum Wins Highly Competitive Schwarzman Scholarship
This article, by Amy Laskowski originally appeared in BU Today on July 11, 2023.
Nikta Khani (CAS’20) will head to Beijing for graduate studies this fall
Photo by Jackie Ricciardi for Boston University
This fall, a recent BU alum is headed to a top Chinese university for a one-year, fully funded graduate degree program after earning a highly competitive Schwarzman Scholarship. Enrolling at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Nikta Khani will study China’s emerging technology landscape, focusing on augmented and extended reality (AR/XR), and will earn a master’s degree in global affairs. Tsinghua is considered one of the most respected universities in the world—Times Higher Education ranks it 16th on its global list.
Launched in 2016, the highly competitive scholarship program is funded by Blackstone Group cofounder and CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman and is designed to build a global community of future leaders who will help deepen understanding between China and other countries. More than 3,000 applicants from around the world apply annually for one of the 150 scholarships. Students spend the year studying at Schwarzman College on the Tsinghua campus, where they focus on three pillars: leadership, global affairs, and China. Scholars are assigned a mentor and visit local companies, government agencies, and cultural sites during their time abroad.
Khani (CAS’20) says she is eager for the chance to study China’s innovation economy, especially in the areas of emerging technology, media, and social impact. Since graduating from BU three years ago, she has been busy: she has assisted on a counterterrorism research project at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, worked as a staffer for Congresswoman Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and as a researcher on the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where she investigated the influence of social media platforms’ business models, algorithms, and advertising practices.
Technology “really touches upon everything, whether it’s disinformation bots, advertising learning from an algorithm to influence what brand of soap you want to buy, or even targeted media that promotes political division around the world,” says Khani, currently assistant director of the Atlantic Council’s Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web. “Similar to clean energy, I have learned how important it is to make the business case for responsible tech.”
Khani’s current research interests include immersive technology, AI, social impact through tech entrepreneurship, and emerging media for entertainment and the arts. By way of example, she points to filmmakers now using extended reality and AI in their art. “I think being in China, where the majority of the innovation for emerging technologies is happening, is going to influence me a lot,” she says.
Khani is only the second BU alum to be awarded a Schwarzman Scholarship, according to Jeff Berg, BU’s director of national and international scholarships. “Nikta is an exceptional person deeply deserving of this honor, and her success also confirms BU’s global competitiveness at the highest levels,” he says. (Berg hopes that news of Khani’s honor inspires more BU students to explore scholarships and fellowships they may be eligible for and says his office is a great resource for those with questions and seeking assistance.)
At BU, Khani majored in international relations and affairs with minors in Persian translation and film and TV. She was an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) humanities scholar, a development fellow for the Pardee School of Global Studies Forced Migration and Human Trafficking Initiative, and the director general of the Boston Invitational Model United Nations Conference, among other honors.
“One of the things I loved about BU was that it wasn’t a school that was only really good at one thing,” she says. “I was constantly surrounded by interesting, ambitious people from all different disciplines and I felt like I was learning constantly. I wanted my graduate education to mimic that.”
In her spare time, Khani enjoys hiking and hopes to do a lot of that in China. A vegetarian, she says she has slowly begun eating meat again so that she can be as open as possible with her diet while abroad. “The Schwarzman program organizes trips to different parts of China that tourists normally wouldn’t go to or that are hard to get to,” she says, “so we don’t have an insular Beijing experience.”
She was drawn to apply to the Schwarzman program, she says, because its scholars come from different countries and disciplines, including finance, health care, philosophy, and art. “It’s very multidisciplinary, and I think there is something to be gained from not being in a program where your classmates all have the same cookie-cutter background,” she says.
Khani grew up in Iran and New Haven, Conn., speaks fluent Farsi, and has traveled to over 30 countries. Her parents emphasized travel when she was growing up. “All of my parents’ money went into traveling because they saw it as an extension of our education,” she says. “I think travel is so important as it helps you gain perspective and challenge your beliefs.”