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UW senior Jeffrey Eaton, who was recently named a Marshall Scholar, plans to use the prestigious two-year full scholarship to work on his Ph.D. in infectious disease epidemiology at London's Imperial College. Eaton is focused on a career in global health, though he originally planned to major in math and music at the UW.
Eaton found music to be the perfect counterpoint to his passion for math. "I would go to the practice room when I was particularly frustrated with a math problem. Similarly, I would go work on math if I was having a hard time with something on my bass," says Eaton, who came to the UW after his sophomore year in high school and will graduate in June with a master's degree in statistics, bachelor's degrees in sociology and math, and a minor in music.
Such wide-ranging interests are common for students who enter the UW through the Academy for Young Scholars, a program for students who come to the UW after 10th grade. "Jeff typifies the intense curiosity, motivation, commitment, brilliance, and amazing energy that our students bring to the UW," says Kate Noble, the Halbert and Nancy Robinson Professor and director of the Halbert and Nancy Robinson Center for Young Scholars, which runs UW early-entrance programs.
Eaton's interest in math and sociology led him to the class that cemented his direction: a graduate sociology course in demographic methods, taught by Sociology Department Assistant Professor Samuel Clark, who researches HIV epidemics in Africa. "I saw it as a way that I could finally combine my ability in math and interest in sociology in a useful way." Eaton worked with Clark, earning a Mary Gates Venture Scholarship that allowed him to live in South Africa last year and study economic development and health care in 21 rural villages there.
With the creation of the new Department of Global Health and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the UW has become "an epicenter for global health work," Eaton says. "I certainly could foresee myself coming back to Seattle after my Ph.D."