Directory

I am broadly interested in using ecological and mathematical approaches to answer questions in infectious disease epidemiology. I did my masters and PhD in Dr. Caroline Trotter’s group in the Disease Dynamics Unit at Cambridge, where I applied mathematical modelling techniques and traditional epidemiological analysis to better understand and reduce the burden of meningitis in the African meningitis belt. In 2019 I joined the Vaccine Epidemiology Research Group led by Professor Nick Grassly at Imperial College, where I study the epidemiology of vaccine-derived polioviruses.

Previous Education

Princeton University

Links

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/l.cooper
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lvcooper

Cooperation is important for the evolution of many species, allowing them to persist in otherwise hostile environmental conditions. As an undergraduate at Princeton, I cultivated an interest in the evolution of cooperative behavior through my research on three avian species. During my PhD in Zoology as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, I hope to uncover the impacts of cooperation on biodiversity using burying beetles as a model study system. Not only do burying beetles provide essential ecosystem services such as returning bioavailable nutrients to the soil, but they can also help us understand how social behavior might influence biodiversity on a genetic and phenotypic scale. By studying wild beetle populations in Cambridge, I also hope to learn about drivers of local adaptation in a fragmented habitat, which can inform us about factors that allow species to adapt to human-induced environmental change. I believe that the biodiversity crisis is one of the most important challenges facing humanity today; my work will contribute to meaningful solutions to preserve the well-being of humans and the ecosystems in which we live. I am honored to be joining a community of scholars committed to improving the lives of beings around the world.

Previous Education

Princeton University Ecology & Evolutionary Biology 2022

Born in Philadelphia, Amanda Dennis studied modern languages at Princeton and Cambridge Universities before earning her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded a Whited Fellowship in creative writing. An avid traveler, she has lived in six countries, including Thailand, where she spent a year as a Princeton in Asia fellow. She is the author of the novel, Her Here (2021), and of the book of literary criticism, Beckett and Embodiment (2021), and she has written about literature for the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and Guernica, as well as for a number of academic books and journals. She is assistant professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing at the American University of Paris

Links

https://www.aup.edu/profile/adennis
https://www.amandadennis.net
https://www.facebook.com/amanda.dennis.9638
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-dennis-6a560013

My experiences studying Medical Anthropology, Global Health, African Studies, and Gender Studies at Princeton expanded my understanding of social inequality and its impact on sexual health around the world. Through my ethnographic projects studying pregnant women during the pandemic and women using doula services, I recognized the lived experiences of women seeking healthcare amid various barriers. The chance to better these women's health options inspires me to continue my studies. After working on health equity in the US, South Africa, Vietnam, and New Zealand, I am eager to begin my MPhil in Health, Medicine, and Society at Cambridge to understand the social factors of health and wellbeing in a new cultural context. In my dissertation research, I will explore access to sexual health education for people with disabilities, both in the Cambridge community and internationally. After my time at Cambridge, I intend to attend medical school and practice as a women’s health physician. I am so honored and humbled to join such an outstanding community and learn from my fellow Gates Cambridge peers.

Previous Education

Princeton University Medical Anthropology 2021

During my year at Cambridge, I researched the growth of eastern Chinese political control in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, focusing on the demolition of Kashgar’s Old City.

In college, I came to study German almost accidentally, drawn by inspiring professors. There I found my intellectual home, but I became part of other communities as well, through soccer, running, and volunteer programs. I taught a writing class at the local arts council and directed a mentoring program that matched Princeton students with local children. Thanks to a DAAD Fellowship for study in Berlin in 2007-2008, I was able to continue research I had done for my senior thesis on medieval Geman courtly love poetry. At Cambridge and later at UC Berkeley, I deepened and broadened my study of medieval German literature. My MPhil and PhD research focused on the aesthetics and politics of courtly lyric. I examined the literary techniques that poets used to craft individual personae to distinguish themselves as members of an aesthetic elite. Since finishing the PhD, I have worked in politics and government in Washington state, where I am now a speechwriter for the Senate Democratic Caucus at the state legislature.

My study at Cambridge centers on Chaucer and several of his Italian and Latin sources. I am planning to write on Chaucer's translation of Boethius' Consolcation of Philosophy and perhaps explore the use of Boethian poetry in the Troilus and Criseyde.

Although I grew up in New York City, I spent two years in Jerusalem and a gap year in rural Peru before completing an undergraduate degree in History, and Global Health and Health Policy at Princeton University. As a History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine student at Cambridge, I am committed to the interdisciplinary mission of interrogating science and medicine through the lens of humanities. I will study fourteenth-century bureaucratic documents, using paleographic and digital humanities methods to explore the local effects of the plague on class relations and Jewish-Christian interactions. I seek to understand the public health issues facing our societies today in the context of experiences centuries ago. It is my goal to bring this unique medievalist perspective and training to the public policy sphere where I aspire to highlight voices often excluded from bureaucratic systems, and facilitate deep historical, culturally-specific approaches to public policy creation.

Previous Education

Princeton University Bachelor's DegreeHistory & Global Health Policy 2019

Previous Education

Princeton University

Links

http://www.linkedin.com/eglennon

Links

https://files.nyu.edu/dlg325/public

I grew up in NYC and completed my undergraduate studies in philosophy at Princeton University. As an editor for the Daily Princetonian, I covered the #MeToo movement as stories unfolded on campus. Through my reporting, research, and friendships, I realized the #MeToo problem was widely shared. Motivated to close what scholars call a “justice gap” between the rates of rape victimization and conviction, I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the nature of consent, the appropriateness of blame and punishment, and the requirements of justice in cases of rape. My ambition is to help change the way we think about and respond to interpersonal wrongdoing to ensure that everyone’s right to bodily autonomy is respected. During my MPhil, I plan to study topics in ethics, philosophy of law, and feminist philosophy, and to continue my learning in meta-ethics, value theory, and social philosophy. In my free time, I enjoy freestyle rapping, powerlifting, and filmmaking. I am grateful to be joining the ranks of Gates Cambridge scholars.

Previous Education

Princeton University Philosophy 2020

My Princeton University and Columbia University degrees weren’t the first to teach me that inequity in education opportunities and outcomes is wide-spread, yet poorly-addressed. Writing my college and scholarship essays on my smartphone and having my mother bus me to the best free advanced academic programs available outside my neighborhood taught me that. When coupled with biases in technology that scholars like Ruha Benjamin, Joy Buolamwini, and Timnit Gebru expose, the future of EdTech and its ability to widen educational divides and be complicit in anti-Black racism is concerning. This conviction will guide my Cambridge PhD research as I investigate the use of EdTech applications by out-of-school youth (OSY). In meditating on what I aim to accomplish in the realm of EdTech, I ultimately start by questioning and analyzing how we adapt technology to students’ learning needs, working alongside students to design interventions. Moreover, I will grapple with how education can be made more equitable and how research is more than a distorted reflection imagined by outsiders studying communities unfamiliar to them. Rather, it’s an interrogation of how the Western world relinquishes agency and legitimacy to these communities.

My research work during my undergraduate years have shown me the extent to which chemical tools with atomic level precision can be applied to complex biological systems. Specifically, epigenetic systems that are constantly showing the interplay between nature and nurture at the individual level present an appropriate platform for utilizing peptide chemistry to help elucidate the complex language. I am excited to have this opportunity to continue this work in Cambridge to incorporate other groundbreaking technologies to help decode the epigenetic language. In the long term, I hope to become a physician-scientist developing medically relevant technologies to support patients in need.

Previous Education

Princeton University