2023 Scholarship Winners Announced

The Twin Cities Illini Club names two Minnesota high school graduates as recipients of its annual scholarship.

The Twin Cities Illini Club has awarded its annual Jack Carlson Memorial Twin Cities Illini Club Scholarship to Chetan Boddeti and Alexandra Levinshteyn. Chetan is a graduate of Wayzata High School in Plymouth, and Alexandra, who goes by Sasha, graduated from Spring Lake Park High School.
 

Chetan plans to pursue studies in statistics, computer science, and economics with the goal of becoming a data scientist in the field of AI and machine learning. During his high school years, Chetan worked as a student researcher/mentee in labs and institutes at the University of Minnesota, which led him to find his passion for data science. In this work, he aided in the development of projects at the University specifically geared toward bioinformatics and neuroscience. In high school, he was an avid member of the science Olympiad club as well as the Business Professionals Association. He also volunteered at Maple Grove Hospital as well as through ISKCON.
 

Sasha will double major in computer science and physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. After college, she hopes to pursue a PhD and research quantum computing. In high school, she captained her high school's Math Team, Knowledge Bowl Team, and Code Team subsection of the FIRST Robotics Team. She was also a member of the Minnesota State math team and participated and placed in numerous state and national math competitions.
 

Aside from being active in STEM-focused extracurriculars, Sasha served as the Communications Officer of the Student Association Board of the Post-Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she took numerous college classes throughout high school. In this  role, she brought PSEO students from all over the Twin Cities area together. She was a member of the National Honors Society and spent much of her time volunteering as a teacher's assistant for various STEM camps. She remains extremely passionate about bringing people, especially women and members of the LGBT+ community, into STEM fields.
 

University of Illinois alumni in the Twin Cities can meet the award recipients in a July 31 Twin Cities Illini Club Zoom call. Email the club tcilliniclub@gmail for details.

The Twin Cities Illini Club student scholarship recognizes excellence in academics and extracurricular participation and is awarded annually to a Minnesota student accepted into the University of Illinois. Profiles of previous honorees appear on the club’s Past Recipients page.