November 21, 2025

UW undergrad named 2026 Rhodes Scholar

University of Washington senior Shubham Bansal, ’26, has been named a 2026 Rhodes Scholar, one of the most prestigious academic awards for U.S. students.

Bansal, majoring in neuroscience, is one of only 32 students nationwide to receive the award. The Rhodes Scholarship fully funds graduate study at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and includes a character, service and leadership development program.

Bansal is the first UW student to be selected for the Rhodes Scholarship since 2012 and the University’s 38th Rhodes Scholar. He says the Rhodes feels “like a vote of confidence in the work that I have been doing in my community. … I still think of myself as the kid who started college at 16 and got lost in Bagley Hall trying to find his first class. Seeing my name next to people I’ve looked up to for years feels surreal.”

“All of us at the UW are inspired by Shubham’s commitment to learning and service,” says Ed Taylor, vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. “This recognition as a Rhodes Scholar will give him the chance to further develop the leadership and expertise he brings to issues of substance use and public health.”

The 2026 class of Rhodes Scholars was selected by 16 independent U.S. committees. Nearly 2,800 students began the application process, and 965 received endorsements from more than 264 colleges and universities. The 2026 cohort represents 22 institutions. Since the first class in 1904, 3,707 Americans have received Rhodes Scholarships.

An early start

Bansal grew up in Mukilteo, Washington, and spent his first two years of high school at Kamiak High School before entering the UW Robinson Center Academy at only 16 years old. “The UW has given me far more opportunities than I ever expected,” he said, noting faculty and staff who helped him turn “half-formed ideas” into projects with real impacts.

He credits many UW communities, especially the Robinson Center, with helping him find his footing. The Robinson Center’s small, intensive classes and welcoming community made it feel normal to be 16 and eager to dive into higher education. The program showed him young people can contribute to serious academic work and youth perspectives deserve a place in conversations about policy and science.

From cold email to global research

As a researcher in the Linsley Lab at Benroya Research Institute, Bansal analyzes single-cell T-cell receptor data, studying how features of immune system cells change across SARS-CoV-2 infection and autoimmune diseases. That work has taught him “to be very careful about what we can and cannot claim from data and how much effort it takes to go from a research figure to something that might actually change care.” He joined the lab after sending a cold email to principal investigator Dr. Peter Linsley, who accepted him into his lab. Since then, he has published research on T-cell receptor repertoires in autoimmunity.

At Seattle Children’s Research Institute, in Dr. Sara Webb’s lab, Bansal analyzes EEG data from youth with neurodevelopmental disorders and links it to behavior. There, he has seen “how small choices in analysis can change how we label a child’s attention or emotional regulation, which has real consequences for families sitting across from a clinician.”

Support from the UW has helped make this research possible. Funding from the Population Health Initiative and a Mary Gates Research Scholarship allowed him to cut back on his part-time job, spend more time with “messy datasets,” publish papers and present his work at international conferences for autism research. Sharing his findings with scholars who asked hard questions he had not considered sharpened his methods and showed him what it means to be part of a global research community.

Connecting circuits and stories

Bansal’s studies in neuroscience and anthropology pull him in “two complementary directions.” Neuroscience teaches him to think in terms of cells, circuits and pathways. Anthropology, he says, pushes him to ask whose stories and social realities surround those pathways, including housing, stigma and policy.

Mentors like neuroscience professor David Perkel and anthropology professor James Pfeiffer helped him bridge those perspectives, encouraging him to let questions from community work shape his science and to bring rigorous evidence back to the communities he serves.

In his hands-on UW neuroscience labs, he sees how substances change behavior and how carefully designed experiments can reveal those effects. In anthropology courses, he learns how those same substances are entangled with criminalization, race and power. “Putting the two together has completely changed how I think about health and community,” Bansal said.

“That mix is what pushes me to connect evidence from the lab with community stories and to think of policy as something that has to make sense to both.”

“Shubham’s ability to connect scientific research with real-world impact is remarkable,” said Provost Tricia Serio. “His work in neuroscience, anthropology and community health demonstrates how interdisciplinary scholarship can meaningfully address urgent public health challenges. This recognition affirms his leadership and his potential for continued impact.”

Turning grief into national impact

Bansal is also the founder and director of Narcare, a community-based nonprofit that distributes life-saving medication, trains community responders and advocates for policies that expand overdose prevention across the United States. Narcare grew out of both a personal loss and what he was seeing around him. After a friend died from cocaine laced with fentanyl, Bansal kept thinking about “what might have been different if someone had had naloxone or a test strip that night.” On campus, he heard the same story in different forms: Students wanted to help but didn’t have naloxone, didn’t know how to use it or were afraid to call for help.

“What began as four undergraduates and an idea is now a national nonprofit,” he said. Along the way, he has navigated IRS paperwork, co-developed curriculum with public health workers, worked with colleagues to design and build a secure naloxone distribution box when none existed and pushed for campus- and state-level policy changes by gathering data and reframing the conversation. Under the team’s leadership, Narcare has helped train hundreds of people, distributed more than $300,000 worth of harm-reduction supplies and supported programs aimed at increasing linkage to treatment that reach tens of thousands of students nationally.

Leadership rooted in service

As a Mary Gates Leadership Scholar, Bansal defines leadership as “less about being in charge and more about paving a path so other people can do meaningful work long after you are gone.” With Narcare, that means building resources, policies and a community structure so future students can keep improving the work after he graduates.

Leadership also means paying attention to who is not at the table and bringing them into the conversation, he said. In projects with the Washington State Department of Health and King County’s Health Care for the Homeless Network Governance Council, he tries to ask whose experiences are missing and how to design around their needs, not just the needs of people who already feel comfortable in clinics and meetings. “If I’ve done my job well,” Bansal said, “the people I work with have more tools, more voice and need me a little less.”

A Rhodes Scholar’s next chapter

Bansal says he feels “very lucky to be able to represent the University of Washington at an international level.” The UW has given him access to faculty and staff who backed his ideas to student organizations and student government that taught him about leadership, community and student health. Case competitions hosted by the Foster School of Business and innovation challenges across campus, he added, pushed him to think about “how policy, business and health interact” and gave him a safe place to test his ideas. “I hope this scholarship is one small way to reflect back the mentorship and trust UW has shown me,” he said.

The Rhodes Scholarship, he says, “will let me do something I could not do on my own.” At Oxford, Bansal plans to pursue a master’s degree in health service improvement and evaluation followed by a master’s in public policy, focusing on building evidence-based programs that prevent overdose and expand access to treatment for people with substance use disorders while continuing to grow Narcare’s work.

“To make real change I know I need to master two distinct languages: the clinical evidence of what works and the political grammar of how policy is made,” he said.

After Oxford, he plans to train as a physician in addiction medicine and design and evaluate programs that expand access to evidence-based care. “I want to come back to the United States with both the tools and the credibility to connect clinical care and policy in a way that keeps people who use substances alive and connects them with the resources they need,” he said.

It takes a village

Bansal is quick to point out the support he’s received. UAA’s Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards (OMSFA) he said, “has quietly been there at every step,” from talking through big questions to reading essay drafts and running mock interviews. Together with programs like the Mary Gates Endowment for Students and student groups across campus, the UW transformed “from a place where I took classes into a community that helped me figure out what kind of work I want to do in the world.”

He also credits his family as being his foundation. His parents, who immigrated to the United States, modeled persistence, humility and quiet courage, and his older brother has been a steady role model for him since childhood. They kept him grounded through setbacks and encouraged him to never stop trying. Alongside them, a wide circle of mentors in anthropology, public health, neuroscience and clinical research showed him how to connect rigorous science with justice-minded service.

“I would not be the person I am today without the generosity, guidance and support of each one of my mentors,” he said.

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About the Rhodes Scholars Program

The Rhodes Scholarship is a fully-funded postgraduate award that enables talented students from around the world to study full-time at the University of Oxford. It is a merit-based program designed to develop public-spirited leaders and to advance international understanding and peace through a global community of Scholars.

About the Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards

The Rhodes Scholarship application process is supported by the Office of Merit Scholarships, Fellowships and Awards (OMSFA), a UAA program. OMSFA works with faculty, staff and students to identify and support promising students in developing the skills and personal insights necessary to become strong candidates for this and other prestigious awards.