A University of South Carolina senior with a passion for medieval music has received a 2009 Marshall Scholarship.

Elizabeth Nyikos, a South Carolina Honors College student majoring in piano performance, joins an elite group of American students chosen for this honor. The Marshall Commission annually awards up to 40 scholarships for two years of graduate- level studies in any academic field at an institution in the United Kingdom. The scholarships, founded in 1953 in Great Britain by an Act of Parliament, are named for George C. Marshall, the former U.S. Secretary of State.

Nyikos, who plans to pursue a master's degree in musicology at Oxford University, is the second Carolina student to be awarded a Marshall scholar, following Nicholas Miller in 2001.

Holder of a Palmetto Fellowship and National Merit Scholarship, Nyikos was homeschooled and is multilingual. She is the daughter of Peter Joseph and Leila Maria Nyikos of Columbia. Her father is a professor in the university's department of mathematics.

Niykos has conducted research in England, Spain, and Italy in pursuit of her passion for medieval music.

She was awarded a Magellan Fellowship to study in Budapest, Hungary, and an Honors College Undergraduate Research Grant to help fund her research interests.

With her education in music performance and her research experience, Nyikos reconstructed the music of a 14th- century manuscript discovered at Columbia College by Dr. Scott Gwara, a University of South Carolina professor of English. In collaboration with an Oxford University medievalist, Nyikos located similar manuscripts in Italy and Spain. With information from the Columbia College manuscript and two additional sources, Nyikos assembled all three voices, thus reconstructing and performing the entire piece for the first time in 600 years. Since then, she has curated an exhibit of medieval music from the university's collection and founded the medieval vocal ensemble, Canticum Novum.

Nyikos said the Marshall award will enable her to pursue her career goal of teaching, research and performance