Rhodes Scholars include pair from Washington University

~ The two, selected from 896 applicants, will enter Oxford University in England next October.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A Washington University student whose childhood asthma led her to pursue a career in medicine and a recent graduate of the St. Louis school who hopes to engage the public in debate about science are among 32 Americans selected as Rhodes Scholars for 2007.

Leana S. Wen, 23, and Aaron F. Mertz, 22, who discovered they had been selected Saturday after interviews in Kansas City, were chosen from 896 applicants endorsed by 340 colleges and universities. The students will enter Oxford University in England next October.

The U.S. students, whose names were announced Sunday, will join an international group of scholars selected from 13 other places around the world. About 85 scholars are selected each year.

Wen, who finishes medical school in May, was born in Shanghai, China. She was frequently hospitalized as a child because of her asthma, which was so severe that part of a lung was removed.

"I wanted to help the world," she said of her desire to become a doctor. "I was ill as a child and that was the personal aspect."

Came to America at age 8

Wen, whose family sought political asylum in the United States when she was 8, envisions a career that combines developing health-care policy and working as an emergency room physician.

"I would be able to see patients that often society neglects," she said in a telephone interview Sunday. "Unfortunately, emergency rooms have become a safety net."

She has served as the national president of the 65,000-member American Medical Student Association and took a year off school to lobby for the group. She also has served as a global health fellow for the World Health Organization in Geneva and has been selected for a fellowship that will allow her to travel to Rwanda in January to develop treatment programs for women who contracted HIV as a result of genocide-related rapes.

Wen, who started college at the age of 13 and medical school at 18, said she was eager to explore other fields, such as economics, while attending Oxford.

Graduated in May

She will be joined by Mertz, who graduated in May from Washington University, where he played the cello and studied physics.

He is pursuing a doctorate in physics at Yale University and plans to take a leave from the program to study the history of science, medicine and technology at Oxford. Eventually, he plans to work as a research physicist and use his Oxford training to engage the public in debate about scientific issues, such as research priorities and the training of the next generation of scientists.

He has conducted astrophysics research at the Max Planck Institute in Munich and nuclear physics research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Rhodes Scholarships were created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes. Winners are selected based on academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership potential and physical vigor, among other attributes.

Now that Wen's asthma is under control, she is training for a marathon, something that meets the physical vigor requirement, and is the director of a dance troupe that combines Middle Eastern and fusion dance.

"That's why I'm so proud of physical activity," she said. "Running a marathon, that's something I wouldn't have imagined before."

Mertz runs, and two years ago he took up contra dancing, a traditional American social dance performed to live folk music.