Student wins inaugural Annenberg Marshall Scholarship

Student wins inaugural Annenberg Marshall Scholarship

University Park, Pa. -- Lee Bassett, a physics major in the Schreyer Honors College with minors in astronomy and astrophysics and mathematics, was selected as the first student to receive the Annenberg Marshall Scholarship to study in the United Kingdom.

The Annenberg Scholarship is new this year, in recognition of Leonore Annenberg, wife of the late ambassador Walter H. Annenberg, for her support commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Marshall Scholarship. To receive this distinction, Bassett placed first of more than 150 applications and 20 interviews in the New York region.

“This is quite a feat,” said Ray Raymond of the British Consulate in New York. “There are so many extraordinary students who apply for the Marshall Scholarship. We are often skeptical when letter writers say this student is brilliant, but in this case, simply put: this student is brilliant.”

The Marshall Scholarships began in 1953 as a gesture of thanks from the British government for the United States’ assistance in rebuilding Europe after World War II. Each year, 40 scholars are selected to spend two years in graduate school at a British University, with all fees, living expenses, books, cost of thesis and research, fares to and from the United States, and daily travel paid by the British government.

Bassett will graduate from Penn State with a bachelor’s degree in physics and honors in astronomy and astrophysics, where he currently works with Professor William Brandt, studying X-ray observations of some of the most distant objects in the universe. He also has conducted research in cosmic ray astrophysics with Professor James Beatty, contributing to the Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass (CREAM) balloon detector and the Pierre Auger Observatory. During this past summer, Bassett collaborated with Professor Richard Robinett on two papers presenting pedagogical approaches to topics in quantum mechanics.

Bassett is active in music as a pianist, organist and tubist. He regularly performs at Penn State as soloist and accompanist, and provides worship music for the Lutheran Campus Ministry services at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center. He performed on the tuba with the 1999 MENC All-Eastern Honors Band at Carnegie Hall, New York City.

Bassett is vice president of the Penn State Society of Physics Students and a member of Sigma Pi Sigma, a national physics honors society. He is an avid surfer and studied abroad at the University of Sydney in Australia.

After first completing the Certificate of Advanced Studies in Mathematics at Cambridge University, Bassett intends to pursue a research degree in quantum information processing in the Center for Quantum Computation (CQC) at Cambridge, home of many of the top theoretical and experimental scientists in the discipline. He is a Braddock Scholar at Penn State and a recipient of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for Excellence.

Lee is a son of Jerry and Janet Bassett and the oldest of three children. He grew up in Quakertown, Pa., and graduated from the Quakertown Community School District.