Two New Zealand winners of the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship
18 September 2025 | news
Two New Zealanders are heading to postgraduate studies at Harvard University on funded scholarships thanks to the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship.
Andrew Tang and Samara O’Neill both have expertise and interests in health policy and are pursuing Master’s degrees which they hope to be able to use working in New Zealand’s health sector.
Andrew Tang
Andrew previously won the 2018 Girdlers’ Scholarship to complete his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics at the University of Cambridge where he graduated with First Class Honours. He has since worked across the world at McKinsey & Company, advising multilateral organisations, governments and companies on optimising healthcare service delivery through data analytics.
At Harvard, Andrew is a candidate for the Master of Science degree in Data Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He plans to research the application of natural language processing to detect and counter online health misinformation in vulnerable communities in New Zealand. Ultimately, Andrew hopes to leverage computational methods to advance equitable public policy in healthcare.
Samara O’Neill
A public health doctor who graduated from the University of Otago and the University of Auckland, Samara plans to complete a Master in Public Administration Degree at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Focusing on international affairs, and political and economic development in her degree, Samara hopes to analyse and evaluate public health policy and problems from global, economic, and financial perspectives. In doing so, she aims to bring these viewpoints, alongside robust health evidence, to foster global cooperation within public health medicine and encourage public and private sectors to invest in universally accessible healthcare.
By developing expertise in these areas, she plans to lead evidence-based public policy that improves health, particularly for marginalised populations, including Māori and Pacific communities and people living in low socioeconomic areas in New Zealand.
The Frank Knox Fellowship programme provides funding for students from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to conduct graduate study at Harvard University. Funding is guaranteed for up to two years of study at Harvard for students in degree programmes requiring more than one year of study. There can be as many as 30 Knox Fellows at Harvard in any given year.