Abdul El-Sayed’s Oxford years: PhD, political influences and sporting distinction

Michigan senator-elect's former peers recall his time at university in Britain - and his love of coronation chicken sandwiches

In the cold, twilight days of 2008, inside the University of Michigan's fortress-like Fleming administration building, one student was given a particularly adulatory sendoff.

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the university at the time, convened a ceremony for the latest Rhodes scholar heading to the University of Oxford: Abdul El-Sayed. There is no doubt among anyone who crosses his path that he will achieve all he sets out to accomplish and more," she declared to a room full of the university's leaders, calling the medical PhD student the epitome of the engaged intellect".