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February 19, 2020
Benjamin Franklin Scholars
BFS Thouron Winners

Two BFSers, Daniel Brennan and Braden Cordivari, have won the prestigious Thouron Award! The Thouron Award was established by Sir. John Thouron and his wife, Lady Esther Thouroun, to promote improved relations between the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Daniel and Braden are two of seven recipients of the scholarship this year.

Daniel is a Penn senior who has spent his time at the university competing with the lightweight crew team, studying military history (a subject quite personal for him, as a United States Marine), working against hunger, and more. Daniel had this to say of his award:

“I am incredibly excited to have been selected to receive the Thouron. As a BFS scholar I’ve been around CURF for a long time and the Thouron’s unique emphasis on family and community has always struck me as something very special and rewarding about the award. For many of these kinds of awards, the selection process is hyper-focused on the 1-3 years of your degree, but applying for the Thouron I felt that I was being considered for entry into a community that will be a part of my academic, professional, and social life for years to come. It's also super exciting to know that I’ll be heading over to the U.K with such a solid class of Penn Thourons; I got to know each of the other scholars during the interviews and with such interesting and accomplished people I’m happy that we’ll be seeing more of one another!

"While the past few weeks since winning the award have been very exciting as I’ve been able to start planning my course of study next year, more than anything else I have felt just very grateful. There are a lot of professors, coaches, bosses, and mentors who gave me opportunities and guidance without which none of this would have been possible.”  

Braden is a 2018 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences. His focus has been on archaeology and anthropolgy: he has worked, since 2015, at Penn's Iron Age city of Gordion excavations, and spent 2018-2019 studying Greek archaeology and history at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens as a John Williams White Fellow. Braden had this to say of his award:

"I'm honored to have been selected for the Thouron and very excited to have the opportunity to study archaeological science at Cambridge. I think it's an important time to be considering the ways people in the past interacted with their environment and natural resources, and archaeological science gives the fine-grained data necessary to look at this in detail. We can't effectively plan for the future without understanding where we've been already, and the opportunity the Thouron is providing me to study for this MPhil will help me develop my research toward this goal."

Congratulations to both Daniel and Braden! We are excited to see what great things will come from them in the future! Read more about this year's Thouron winners here.

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