Two University of Washington students have been named Rhodes scholars for 2012.

Byron Gray and Cameron Turtle were selected from among 830 candidates nominated by their colleges and universities. They're the only students studying at a Washington school to receive the honor this year, and the UW is the only public university in the country with more than one new scholar named.

Gray, who is from Post Falls, Idaho, is majoring in political science; law, societies and justice; and Asian studies. He has won U.S. State Department scholarships for the study of Urdu and Hindi, worked for a nongovernmental organization in rural northern India, studied the status of immigrants in Italy and worked on human-rights and religious violence in South Asia.

Turtle, who is from Pullman, is majoring in bioengineering. He is a Mary Gates scholar and a Goldwater scholar, and has done extensive work in cardiac therapeutics. He co-founded Bioengineers Without Borders at the UW. He also founded a company, Point of Care Technologies, that develops molecular medical-diagnostic devices that work with mobile equipment running the Android operating system.

The Rhodes scholarships provide full financial support for scholars to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Both men will begin studying at Oxford in October 2012.

Gray plans to pursue advanced degrees on contemporary India and in socio-legal studies, and Turtle will study cardiovascular medicine.