Jakob Begun, a Cornell University senior from Wantagh, N.Y., has been awarded a 1997 Winston Churchill Foundation Scholarship to England's Cambridge University.

Starting this fall at Churchill College at Cambridge, Begun will pursue a master's degree and do research in X-ray crystallography with Sir Thomas Blundell, Cambridge professor of biochemistry.

The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States awards 10 fellowships each year providing for a year of graduate study in engineering, mathematics or science at Churchill College. Students who earn this award must have demonstrated a concern for critical problems facing society and must possess strong qualities of independence and initiative.

Showing independence and initiative has been no problem for Begun. In between semesters at Cornell, he spent two summers at the Drug Design and Development Centre, Queensland University, in Australia. There, he helped to research the latest generation of drug cocktails -- protease inhibitors given to HIV positive patients -- while he spent the rest of the year as an undergraduate in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, studying biochemistry. He published "Substrate-Based Cyclic Peptidometics of the Phe-Ile-Val That Inhibit HIV-1 Protease Using a Novel Enzyme-Building Mode," in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Chemical Society.

In addition to his research, Begun was a teaching assistant in Cornell's Division of Biology, and he performed research with Steven Ealick, professor of biochemistry.

Begun's past honors at Cornell include being named a Merrill Presidential Scholar and winning the Phi Sigma Pi National Honor Fraternity Leadership Award. He is a member of the Golden Key National Honor Society and was a member of the Alpine ski team as a freshman.

Besides exploring the world of molecular biology, Begun also has explored the world at large. Eight years ago, he and his family sailed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for a two-year period. The family finally settled in Australia, where Begun finished his last two years of high school.

"Traveling the world for two years in a sailboat was a humbling experience," Begun said. Sailing aboard the Ishara, a 50-foot sloop, the family alighted at ports of call as diverse as the Galapagos Islands, Panama, Fiji, American Samoa and many other smaller islands.

Both of Begun's parents are Cornell graduates. His father, Michael, graduated from the College of Engineering in 1969 and his mother, Jessica, graduated from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 1970. His brother, Matt, will be attending college in Australia.

Begun said the sailing expedition and the two-years attending an Australian high school left an indelible mark. Along the way he studied, he said, mammals who lay eggs, saw some of the world's most-poisonous creatures, and learned to appreciate the size of the world and to interact with people of many cultures.

Following his studies in England, Begun will attend Harvard Medical School and pursue an M.D.-Ph.D. degree in structural biology.

The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States was established in 1959 as an expression of American admiration for England's wartime leader. With the enthusiastic endorsement of Sir Winston Churchill, the foundation undertook to encourage the exchange of knowledge and the sharing of ideas in sciences and technology between the United States and Great Britain.