Seaver College Senior, Sean Wu is the first Pepperdine student to receive a Rhodes Scholarship. The Rhodes Scholarship is an opportunity for a select group of Americans to study at Oxford University, Wu said. The program began in 1902 and fully funds a graduate school education.
“I thought that my finalist interview had gone well and I felt confident but I felt a sense of relief hearing I had won,” Wu said.
The application process begins with an online application and a few essay questions, Wu said. From there, there is the possibility to advance to a finalist round and each of the 16 districts in the United States has about 16 finalists.
Wu said to ensure a well-rounded application, he had participated in a lot of computer science-based research. Wu also needed eight letters of recommendation and received them from various areas of his life such as a Pepperdine professor, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and his private tuba instructor.
Stanley Warford, a professor of computer science and physics at Pepperdine, taught Wu in a data structure class.
“Sean is a dedicated guy who is in the top one percent of his class. He represents us so well with this scholarship,” Warford said.
Wu also went on to be a teacher’s assistant for him in that class, Warford said.
“I was ecstatic to learn that Sean received this scholarship,” Warford said. “He is the first person from Seaver College to get this award and I’m so extremely happy for him.”
Ira Kurtz, UCLA professor and chief of Nephrology at UCLA worked with Wu and his research.
“I met Sean through another professor, Fabien Scalzo,” Kurtz said. “I had been thinking about AI and the future of medicine for many years and wanted to get students involved with my work.”
Kurtz said they worked on two main projects together. Both of the projects are published in medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Our main project involved taking multiple choice questions that specialist kidney doctors have to take to re-certify themselves and comparing their results to GPT-4 results,” Kurtz said. “The question I wanted to ask was how GPT-4 does on this test compared to human doctors.”
Wu wrote all the software to get the results they needed and assembled a team for their research, Kurtz said. Wu essentially ran the study.
“Our results found that GPT-4 did almost as good on those multiple choice questions as the human doctors did,” Kurtz said. “GPT-4 was able to score about 70% of the questions right.”
Hearing that Wu got this scholarship was amazing, Kurtz said. He said this could not have happened to a better person.
“They picked the perfect person to represent this award,” Kurtz said. “I think they made a really wise choice.”
Wu initiated everyone on his own-developing his ideas and carrying them out, Kurtz said. Kurtz sometimes feels like he’s talking to himself since Wu has many similar traits.
“He has an expertise that I don’t have,” Kurtz said. “I would not have been able to do this work with anyone else.”
Apart from his research, Wu is involved with the Pepperdine Orchestra where he plays tuba. Wu also participates in intramural basketball.
“I believe that everyone should apply for this scholarship because it’s shown me that just by applying you have a better understanding of yourself and what you really want to do in the future,” Wu said. “It’s a great learning opportunity for yourself even if you do not win.”
Kurtz said he believed Wu is going to be a great researcher. He is highly creative, can easily complete tasks and can write well, Kurts said.
“He is a jack of all trades,” Kurtz said. “I told his father that he does not know how awesome his son is and I told him how blessed he is. Sean is going to do wonderful things in this program.”
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Contact Alicia Dofelmier via email: alicia.dofelmier@pepperdine.edu
