Directory

Josh is a recent graduate of Yale Law School, where he was an Executive Editor of the Yale Law Journal and a Coker Fellow in Constitutional Law. Before law school, Josh completed an MPhil in Criminology at Cambridge and was a Luce Scholar in Taipei. He previously studied Ethics, Politics & Economics at Yale University, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and was awarded the Roosevelt L. Thompson Prize and William H. Orrick, Jr. Senior Essay Prize.

Previous Education

Yale University

Dankrad Feist finished his PhD in Theoretic Physics in 2013. Since then, he has been working in the technology sector. He co-founded the startup Cara Care in 2016. Currently he is working as a Researcher for the Ethereum Foundation, focusing on Applied Cryptography.

Links

https://dankradfeist.de
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dankrad-feist-77677339

Computational chemistry is becoming a more and more powerful tool for chemists as time goes by. One "mystery" of particular interest, which can be very well investigated with the help of computational chemistry, is how certain systems can self-assemble into well-defined structures. My years spent in Cambridge (in the group of Prof. David Wales) helped open up a whole new research direction involving modelling the self-assembly of complex structures from anisotropic building blocks. My current project is about how we can design building blocks capable of multi-level hierarchical self-assembly. My small research institute is slowly expanding through state- and EU-funded research projects, and our long term aim is to become internationally relevant players in the field of nano- and biotechnology.As of 2018, I am also the European Director of Membership for GCAA, so feel free to get in touch with me with any ideas you might have which would contribute to strengthening the alumni community!

Previous Education

University of Szeged, Hungary Chemistry MSc 2005

Merve is a PhD candidate in History funded by the Gates Cambridge Trust and an intellectual and political historian of Africa and its diaspora. Her thesis, ‘Black Cultural Citizenship between State and Nation, 1947-66’, examines the unknown history of the Anglophone dissemination of negritude, the movement for race consciousness long associated with the Francophone world. By attending to negritude’s reception in Nigeria and the United States, I re-frame the history of negritude as a contest over competing forms of “black cultural citizenship,” a form of political belonging which indexed ties to Africa and its diaspora. By focusing on the meeting of Francophone and Anglophone Africa and its diaspora, as well as connecting African intellectual history debates to black internationalist ones, this project ultimately examines the way in which African and diasporic subjects negotiated multiple fields of political belonging: national and post-imperial citizenship managed by the state and an international ‘black cultural citizenship’ that invoked more complex territorial associations..Her research interests include African intellectual and political history, imperial history, and black internationalism. At the undergraduate level, she has taught modern African history, World history, and US history as well as historical method seminars on race, and at the postgraduate level has given seminars on anti-colonial movements in African Studies..Merve completed an MPhil in Historical Studies at the University of Cambridge in 2015, and a double major in history and English, with a minor in philosophy, at Rutgers University’s Newark campus in 2011. Prior to postgraduate study, she served as Program Coordinator of the Diversity Research Center at Rutgers from 2011-13.

Previous Education

Rutgers University
University of Cambridge

I was born in Eastern Canada and raised in rural Washington-State in the US. I completed my BS in Computer Science & Data Science, my BA in Sociology, and my MS in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. I had the honor of researching three different branches of Computer Science: (1) AI Bias, Ethics, Fairness, and Governance, (2) Commonsense Reasoning and development in AI, (3) Designing equitable pedagogies in Computer Science curricula, (and anything else that interests me in a manic spur of the moment). I have also had industry experience in AI development at Google Brain, DeepMind, and AI2. During my PhD in Digital Humanities at Cambridge, I hope to research how to effectively legislate AI governance in protection of intersectional identities from the Global South, especially in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. I hope to pursue fieldwork in critical areas that are most adversely-affected by the recent accelerated developments of AI, and research how it is that AI can be universally-regulated to avoid such outcomes. In deep gratitude, I am honored to join the Gates Cambridge community and continue to learn about the humanities’ intersections with technology from scholars of other fields.

Previous Education

University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering 2024
University of Washington Computer Science 2022
University of Washington Sociology 2022

I attended the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (MSMS), Mississippi’s premier high school for gifted Mississippian students. During my final semester, my curiosity of infectious disease research led me to participate in MSMS’s Research Shadowing Program. Through this, I met Dr. Xiu-Feng (Henry) Wan, a professor at Mississippi State University’s (MSU) College of Veterinary Medicine. My semester of shadowing initiated a long time obsession with infectious disease research and virology, which led me to enroll at Mississippi State University to continue working under Dr. Wan. My undergraduate research in Dr. Wan’s lab has allowed us to understand some aspects of the epidemiology and pathology of bovine influenza D virus in cattle. During my undergraduate career, I was also able to conduct research in avian immunology in Dr. Yin Li’s lab at Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Nanjing, China. While at the University of Cambridge, I will work under Dr. Andrew Firth using bioinformatics to answer questions related to RNA virus evolution. I am excited to engage with my fellow Gates-Cambridge peers and alumni in order to collaborate on infectious disease research.

Previous Education

Mississippi State University

Jessica is a qualified lawyer and human rights defender with over five years of experience in legal practice, research and advocacy work. Her doctoral research examined the overlooked historical experience of Asians in Latin America. In particular, she focused on the experiences of Mexicans of Japanese origin across five generations in relation to the 'mestizo' racial system, citizenship and state violence, as well as repertoires of resistance in Mexico. This study built upon her master’s dissertation on graphic novel representations of mestizaje, the positioning of afro-descendants, and the operation of race and racism in Mexico from a transnational lens. Her research interests include the trans-pacific history of racialised exclusion and belonging, nation-state building, and imperial and colonial formations in twentieth century Mexico. Previously, Jessica completed an MA in Latin American Studies (with Distinction) at University College London, and a BA (First Class Honours) in Law at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Historical Studies at El Colegio de México; co-founder of the CRASSH Graduate Research Group 'Power and Vision: The Camera as Political Technology'; and co-organiser of the conference Memories in Transit, supported by The Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement, at the University of Cambridge, and the British Academy.

Previous Education

University College London
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

An undergraduate in Sociology from the University of London (LSE) and a Gates Scholar when reading for an MPhil in International Relations I went on to work in Sri Lanka's only multidisciplinary think tank, Verite Research., based in Colombo Sri Lanka and as head of politics I managed all research, advisory and projects in the politics research stream. This included editorial management of the weekly media analysis, Verite's signature publication on tracking perceptions on key political and economic issues in Sri Lanka and manthri.lk, Sri Lanka's pioneering parliamentary monitoring platform.
I now work for he United Nations in Sri Lanka as the Reconciliation and Development Specialist

I grew up in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the epicenter of the HIV epidemic. This greatly influenced my research interests. I pursued an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, majoring in genetics and psychology, which gave me the ground tools to understand both the basic science research and the human side of HIV infection. During my Master’s degree at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, I have been identifying the cellular HIV reservoir in lymph nodes from antiretroviral suppressed individuals. Whilst pursuing a PhD in Medicine at Cambridge, I will seek to understand how different cell types that make up the cellular HIV reservoir interact and become permissive to HIV infection. By understanding these interactions, I will be able to identify key pathways that can be manipulated therapeutically to reduce or eradicate the HIV reservoir, allowing for a functional cure. Achieving a functional cure is of immense importance as we currently do not have a cure and it is unsustainable for individuals living with HIV to take daily medication for the rest of their lives, especially in the developing world, where access to medication may be limited. I am honoured to be a part of the Gates Cambridge community and look forward to working and collaborating with like-minded scholars who are committed to improving the lives of others.

Previous Education

University of Kwazulu-Natal Virology 2019
University of Kwazulu-Natal Genetics 2017
University of Cape Town Genetics & Psychology 2015

I am interested in exploring how environmental experiences affect gene expression in relation to acquisition and heritability of disease. At Cambridge, I completed an MPhil focusing on chromatin regulation in the nematode C. elegans.

As an undergraduate studying chemistry and biology at the College of William & Mary, I have had the opportunity to pursue several different research projects that span a spectrum of subjects from developmental biology to physical chemistry. As I have worked to understand the mechanisms regulating stem cell maintenance or to develop an assay that assesses small molecule-microRNA interactions, I have been impressed by the power of scientific research to not only reveal new information about our environment, but also to integrate ideas from disparate disciplines to generate novel solutions for our most difficult problems. At Cambridge, I will work to further develop spectroscopic techniques for the study of protein aggregation relevant to Parkinson’s disease in the Laser Analytics research group in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. I am honored to be able to undertake this project with the support of the Gates community.

I grew up in Los Fresnos, Texas on the southern border of the USA. I speak Spanish and am very proud of my Mexican heritage. I attended university in Baltimore, MD studying Materials Science and Engineering. The city of Baltimore, with its rich history, has become a second home to me. In my undergraduate career, I have worked on a wide variety of materials science related questions from improving the strength of cement, to simulating the fracture of amorphous polymer systems, to creating hybrid organic-inorganic p-n junctions. At Cambridge I will be focusing on understanding charge transfer in organic solar cells in an effort to improve their efficiency. Organic solar cell technology is rich with not only academic discovery but also huge potential to improve the lives of people living without access to electricity.

As a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, I completed my doctoral studies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology with Dr. David Barford. My work involved using cryo-electron microscopy (Cryo-EM), X-ray crystallography, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to study cell cycle regulation. My most exciting discovery was solving the molecular mechanism by which phosphorylation of a cell cycle checkpoint protein, Bub1, triggers kinetochore recruitment of another cell cycle checkpoint, Mad1. For this research I was awarded the Inaugural Whelan Young Investigator Award from the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) and went on to co-found and lead an IUBMB initiative to support trainees.

After my PhD I returned to the USA, where I am now a protein designer at a Seattle-based start-up company called Monod Bio which uses de novo protein design and machine learning methods to create the next generation of therapeutic biosensors.

Previous Education

University of St Andrews

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elyse-fischer-152335151

Previous Education

University of Oregon

My undergraduate career at Louisiana State University has consisted of a unique and interdisciplinary array of influential experiences in medicine, science and public health, which have fueled my aspirations in making a meaningful impact in the rare diseases sector. Through clinical experience in chronic pain management as a phlebotomist and electrocardiogram technician, I developed a passion in serving underrepresented patient communities with unmet medical need. I’ve had the enriching opportunity to investigate primary immunodeficiencies and the development of gene-based therapies for debilitating genetic disorders, including hemophilia and neurofibromatosis, at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and at The Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. This work has been greatly complemented by my studies in genetics and cancer immunology at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France. With the intention of fostering evidence-based policy to improve healthcare access for individuals suffering from rare diseases, I have explored economic, ethical and public health-related obstacles in orphan drug development and distribution. Looking forward, I am eager and honored to begin my scientific journey at Cambridge, among scholars who are committed to the betterment of humanity, where I seek to investigate the molecular pathogenesis of and therapy development for lysosomal storage disorders under the mentorship of Dr. Timothy Cox.

Previous Education

Louisiana State University & Agricultural & Mechan