Two Princeton Seniors Named Marshall Scholars

Maya Butani ’26 and Daniel Yu ’26 were named 2026 Marshall Scholars on Dec. 9 and awarded all-expenses-paid opportunities to study at British universities for up to two years.  

Butani, a New Jersey native from Moorestown, is a molecular biology major and is minoring in global health and engineering biology. According to her LinkedIn, Butani is a Peer Academic Adviser/Health Professions Peer Academic Adviser, an Orange Key tour guide, a Service Focus Junior Fellow, and a member of the Brangwynne Lab in the bioengineering department.  

Butani is also president and founder of Creative Care, an entrepreneurship student group at Princeton, and president of the Princeton Biotech Group. According to the Marshall website, she also served as the president of Alimtas Bioventures and is a Health Scholar at Princeton.  

In 2019, Butani founded South Jersey STEM for girls at her local library, and she volunteers as a math instructor/program coordinator at Learn Fresh, which also focuses on STEM education. She also volunteers in the emergency department at Penn Medicine Princeton Health.  

Butani was previously awarded Princeton’s Santos-Dumont Prize for Innovation and Campus Impact Award. 

According to the Marshall Scholarship website, Butani “aims to reimagine biomedical research to benefit underserved communities around the world,” and for her thesis, she is researching “rRNA modifications, a potential target for the treatment of neglected tropical diseases.” 

Butani plans to attend the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to study immunology of infectious diseases, and then she plans to pursue an M.Phil. in chemical engineering and biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. She ultimately wants to “complete an M.D.-Ph.D. to gain the research and clinical experience necessary to translate technologies from the lab to resource-poor environments,” according to Butani’s profile on the Marshall website. 

Yu, a native of New York City, is majoring in African American studies in the race and public policy track and minoring in gender and sexuality studies and English. According to his LinkedIn, he was an early inductee of Phi Beta Kappa and is head fellow at the University Writing Center. Earlier this year, he was a special projects intern at the ACLU in the National Political Advocacy Department, a strategic planning and program management intern at Lambda Legal, and a fellow with OutVote.  

Yu is a past recipient of Princeton’s Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence and the Freshman First Year Honor Prize. 

According to his Marshall profile, Yu is currently a peer education and leadership fellow at the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. He’s particularly interested in “the intersections of race and gender justice, especially Black queer and trans studies.” 

According to the department of African American studies, Yu founded Positions, “Princeton’s only Asian diaspora student publication.” 

Yu “plans to study the role of race and racism in the contemporary ‘anti-gender’ movement,” according to his Marshall profile, and is “looking forward to spending the next two years in the UK!” 

Marshall scholars “strengthen the enduring relationship between the British and American peoples, their governments, and their institutions,” according to the organization, and selected recipients are “talented, independent, and wide-ranging.” The 43 scholars chosen for the 2026 cohort represent universities across the nation.