New Rhodes Scholar: sharp student from Edmonds

Emma Brunskill is a computer-engineering and physics whiz kid who entered the University of Washington at age 15. This weekend, the 21-year-old from Edmonds was among 32 American students chosen as Rhodes Scholars.

Brunskill, who graduated from the UW in June with degrees in physics and computer science, now is a Presidential Scholar in the department of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's School of Engineering.

"I'm thrilled, really excited," said Brunskill yesterday from her office in Cambridge, where she was studying for an exam. She is eager to get started on her Rhodes proposal, on neuroscience, and "really excited for my school; the UW hasn't had a Rhodes Scholar for several years."

She said her professors in computer science at the UW were "fantastic and incredibly supportive."

Brunskill, whose family lived in Olympia before moving to Edmonds, began her years at the UW as part of its Early Entrance program.

While at the UW, Brunskill won a Goldwater Scholarship, a full-ride award given annually to top students pursuing careers in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering.

This year, Brunskill was the female runner-up for the Computing Research Association's Outstanding Undergraduate award, an annual honor for students with high potential as researchers.

Gretta Bartels, who supervised one of Brunskill's research projects at the UW, called the new Rhodes recipient "one of the brightest students I ever met."

"She asked all the right questions... " Bartels said. "She is very analytical."

Called the Porcupine Project, Brunskill's research involved a failure-detection system for computer networks, with "hundreds of computers in a cluster, and if one of them failed the others would be able to deal with that gracefully," said Bartels.

Bartels said Brunskill was initially intent on becoming a physicist but "just threw in computer science" when she applied for graduate schools, "and of course was accepted into everything she applied to."

Brunskill was a researcher on six projects in the UW departments of computer science, physics, geophysics and chemistry, and worked as a summer research student at the European Center for Particle Physics in Geneva. Some of her research has focused on how to improve life for the disabled She is a member of Amnesty International and studied French at the Sorbonne. She rowed at the UW and continues to row in Cambridge.

At Oxford, Brunskill will pursue a master's degree in science in experimental psychology.

Rhodes Scholarships, created in 1902 as a bequest from British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes, provide two or three years of study at Oxford University in England Eight regional committees chose this year's scholarship winners from among 950 applicants who were endorsed by 327 colleges and universities.