Abdulrahman El-Sayed has been busy.

Rhodes Scholarship recipient Abdulrahman El-Sayed delivering a commencement address at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as a top graduate in Spring 2007. PHOTO: University of Michigan News Service

At 24 years old, the Ann Arbor student has already acquired a joint bachelor’s degree in biology and political science, led a medical mission to Peru, conducted health studies in Guatemala, entered into a joint M.D./Ph.D. program in medicine and public health, served as vice president of the University of Michigan’s Muslim Students’ Association, got married after his junior year, joined the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and started as a defenseman on the U-M lacrosse team.
And he’s about to enter into a whole new level of international accomplishment.

El-Sayed was named one of 32 American recipients of the Rhodes Scholarship on Nov. 23.

Winners of the prestigious award are sent, expenses paid, to study at the University of Oxford in England.

He’s the first U-M student to receive the award since 2004.

“It’s an amazing opportunity and I hope I can make the most out of it,” El-Sayed said. “I’m proud to represent the university in that way.”

Abdulrahman El-Sayed poses with former US President Bill Clinton and University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman during commencements in 2007. PHOTO: University of Michigan News Service

El-Sayed is no stranger to high accolades, either. He once received a few from a former U.S. president.
Chosen to deliver the U-M commencement address as a top graduate in spring 2007, El-Sayed gave a speech that he said he hoped would convey a spirit of achievement through the meshing of cultures.

Former President Bill Clinton, who himself became a Rhodes Scholar in 1968, was the featured speaker that day.

“I don’t want to embarrass your senior speaker,” Clinton said, “but I wish every person in the world who believes that we are fated to have a clash of civilizations and cannot reach across the religious divides could have heard you speak today. I wish every person in the world could have heard you speak today.”

El-Sayed said he couldn’t believe it when Clinton turned and looked at him to say it.

“It was kind of surreal. He’s one of the greatest orators of our time,” he said.

“We’re about to go out into a world that absolutely needs us,” El-Sayed told the crowd in the speech. “It needs to hear our stories, spoken loudly, to consider our opinions and to engage us in discussion. It needs us to ask it questions, to answer when it beckons, to show that we care and to give it mercy, compassion and love. It needs us to help those less fortunate.”

Seeking both medical and epidemiological degrees, El-Sayed explained in his Rhodes Scholarship application why he pursues both paths:

“My religion teaches that if one saves a life, she has saved all of humanity. I remember reading this verse with my father as a boy. ‘How great,’ I thought, ‘would it be then to save a life every day?’ Quick to share my thoughts with Baba, I told him that I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. My father, a professor, thought for a moment, and reasoned, ‘Abdulrahman, wouldn’t it be better to learn why people die, and then teach everyone around you to save lives? Wouldn’t that save more lives?’ His reasoning stuck; but so did mine.”

El-Sayed said his Egyptian parents — his mother a physician and his father an engineering professor at Kettering University who works with renewable energy development — and his step-mother, also a Kettering engineering professor, have been the major influences on his goals and drive.

“My father was someone who came from Egypt with very little in his pocket,” he said. “I hope to make the kind of impact that he has.”

“I hope to make them proud,” he said of his family, which he said was in “a kind of absolute euphoria” when news of the Rhodes honor came.

He’ll enter Oxford in October, 2009 and begin working toward a Master’s degree in global health sciences. He also has his eyes on a doctorate in public health.

The scholarship covers tuition and expenses for two to three years at Oxford, averaging a value of about $50,000 per year.

It won’t be his first time traveling abroad for education.

El-Sayed has led a medical mission to Peru, expanding a U-M program that sent undergraduates to disadvantaged areas of that country in an effort to both learn and try to find ways to help.

“Our group was the first to take medical students out there,” he said. “We learned a lot of lessons. It allowed us to consider global health from a more educated perspective.”

He’s also spent time studying prevalent neurological disorders Guatemala, where there is a high incidence of neural tube defects.

“I’ve always been interested in medicine. It was always very compelling to me,” El-Sayed said.

As an undergraduate, he knew he wanted to tackle the world’s health problems, leading him to biology.

“But I was also a political science major,” he said. “It was really compelling to think about how social factors can influence health.”

He said his interest in research on the social determinants of health was piqued by a study he read that showed an increase in preterm births and low birth weights among pregnant Arab American women in California after the 9/11 attacks, indicating that discrimination and other stress factors caused increased concentrations of the hormone cortisol.

“It was amazing to see how something so macrosocial… could really have an impact on health,” he said. “I fell in love with the science of social epidemiology. It still addressed the same health goals that I had to improve the lives of people.”

He’s since started a similar study on Arab American women in Michigan, and plans to use what he’ll learn at Oxford to push it forward.

When his long academic journey is complete, El-Sayed sees himself working primarily at a research center as an epidemiologist, but still spending time seeing patients as a physician.

“At the same time I’d like to be working in health policy as a policy advisor.” he said. “I want to devote a good amount of my career exploring health care disparities around the world.”

Frequently finding himself in a position where he is a perceived representative of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, El-Sayed takes on the role with pride.

“I see it as one of my biggest responsibilities. I see myself as somebody who — it’s on my back to represent Muslim and Arab Americans, because I’ve been blessed with opportunities that not many other people have had,” he said. “It’s amazing when you can change somebody’s opinions on a whole group of people, just by talking to them.”

He said also takes every opportunity he gets to try to “inspire young people to know that we can make a huge impact and achieve progress.”

On top of everything else, El-Sayed is even considering new athletic pursuits in England.

“Maybe I’ll take up rugby,” he said.

Aisha Saad

Kyle Haddad

Two other Arab Americans, Aisha Saad of the University of North Carolina and Kyle Haddad of Harvard University, were among the 32 American Rhodes Scholarship awardees. About 80 scholars are selected worldwide each year.
Saad, an environmental health science and Spanish major who immigrated from Egypt at age six, plans to pursue a master’s degree in nature, society and environmental policy at Oxford.

Haddad, a history and Near Eastern languages and civilization major of Syrian descent, plans to pursue a doctorate in oriental studies at Oxford.