Directory

Hello, fellow Gates Scholars! Born and raised in New York, I completed my BS in Materials Science and Engineering at MIT and am now going into the third year of my PhD at Cambridge (in Materials Science and Metallurgy). My research focus is inexpensive solar cells, which absorb light and convert it directly to electricity. As you might already know, the solar cells you find on the market today are too expensive to be cost-competitive with coal-based electricity, so we are trying to develop alternatives (ask me about this!). I also play rugby on the Cambridge Blues squad and encourage all who are interested to consider giving it a go! It’s a great opportunity to meet a lot of new people and try playing a sport that is probably brand new to you.

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

At Middlebury College I pursued an independent major in Disability Studies and Social Determinants of Health. My junior thesis excavated the stories of women incarcerated against their will in United States asylums. I used theories of disability to conduct twenty interviews with people with disabilities in corporate positions. When employees do not disclose disabilities, companies do not grant workplace accommodations or include people with disabilities in diversity metrics. As a result of my studies the Middlebury Center for Career and Internships created a position where I serve as a peer-specialist in career counseling for students with disabilities. I continued this work as a disability policy intern for the Senate HELP Committee I collaborated closely with disabled constituents and advocacy organizations, As a student of history and both gender and disability studies, I am drawn to Cambridge’s MPhil in Health, Medicine and Society as a program that will let me weave together these distinct disciplines. This degree will prepare me for a future career in disability policy and accessibility. Ultimately, studying at Cambridge will equip me to help reshape institutions and create a more accessible future.

Previous Education

Middlebury College Disability Studies 2023

After completion of my MD studies, I began working as a resident in the department of Neurosurgery at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany under guidance of Prof. Volker Seifert. During my residency and my recent research I became interested in the interaction between coagulation factors and tumour cells. Driven by the idea of interdisciplinary approaches to develop novel treatment strategies, I am honoured to be starting my PhD project in the laboratory of Dr. Stefano Pluchino in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences with the generous support of the Gates Cambridge Trust. My research focuses on the interaction between neural stem cells and the immune system. In the future, I want to combine my passion for clinical and experimental research to improve the treatment of patients as a surgeon-scientist.

I grew up in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia. At high school, I became involved with my local observatory. There, I began to realise my passion for trying to understand the mysteries of the universe; what is the universe made of, and how did it come to be today? As an undergraduate, I studied a Bachelor of Science (Advanced) with Honours, majoring in Physics at the University of Adelaide. In my final year project, I investigated the effect of dark matter in the sun. I have also been passionately involved in initiatives aimed at improving the lives of university students, such as the Adelaide University Sciences Association, and the Australian Government Office of Learning and Teaching.My goal at Cambridge is to help shed more light on the contemporary problems in theoretical physics. In particular, I will be investigating extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics to explain phenomena such as gravity and dark matter. Through experiments like the Large Hadron Collider and astrophysical and cosmological observations, we can probe for new physics that will provide deeper understanding of our universe and drive technological innovation for generations to come. The Gates Cambridge scholarship will enable me to be at the forefront of groundbreaking research such that I can make a valuable contribution to the knowledge of humankind.

Previous Education

University of Exeter
University of Adelaide

Mohammad Ghassemi is an award winning scholar and entrepreneur. He holds a Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence, and a minor in institutional communications. He is regarded for his work in creating the world's largest open access intensive care database, a wearable A.I. for social coaching and a rapidly growing platform that connects thousands of students for face-to-face meetings at six universities across the US.

Mohammad has over 10 years of experience working in technical and strategic consulting with some of the world's biggest brands (Allstate, Estee Lauder, Thomson Reuters, and Samsung). In prior engagements, he has guided innovation strategy, and built data-driven technologies that leverage AI+'Big Data' to increase customer engagement, improve cost effectiveness, and prioritize innovation opportunities. He was a recipient of the nationally renowned Goldwater scholarship, the internationally renowned Gates-Cambridge award, and several awards from the National Institutes of Health.

For his entrepreneurial accomplishments, he has received awards from, the Sandbox Innovation Foundation, The Legatum Foundation, The Mind Hand Heart Innovation Fund and MassChallenge. He was a finalist in the Bell-Labs Innovation Prize, and a recent winner of the internationally competitive MassChallenge. He holds multiple US Patents, has published a popular book on AI health applications (+150,000 downloads) and has over 20 peer-reviewed papers in several of the most highly respected scientific journals including: Nature Scientific Data, Science Translational Medicine, Proceedings of the IEEE, and the Proceedings of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. His many accomplishments have been featured by the BBC, NPR, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek.

Previous Education

New Mexico State University Electrical and Computer Engineering 2008

Links

http://ghamut.com
http://ghassemi.xyz
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohammad-ghassemi-phd-401a843

Previous Education

Boston University Neuroscience 2021

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrinaghosh

For the past two years I worked with the Clinical Genetics Branch of the National Institute of Health. in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology & Genetics. My responsibilities included assisting in the management of data collected from the eight ongoing clinical trials, in order to research new clues to the etiology and prevention of hereditary cancers. I also attended classes and followed seminars offered by the NIH. These experiences  influenced my decision to pursue a career in epidemiology. I plan to focus my Master thesis on the molecular and genetic epidemiology of cancer. My hope is to continue research towards a PhD degree at the University of Cambridge, and continue my career within an academic environment.

I am from the Midwest, and have strong family and community ties to rural agriculture and wildlife conservation. The intellectual and personal connections I’ve made within and between my disciplines of industrial engineering, global health studies, and business administration at the University of Iowa have intensified my passion to help people and the environment thrive. My research on alternative cooking technologies in rural India and Cameroon, as well as a spectrum of experiences working as an engineer in the public and private sectors, has made me both more aware of the complexity of my chosen field of sustainable development AND eager to strengthen my own understanding of the scientific, behavioral, and economic forces which shape it. I completed the MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development to learn how I can integrate the principles and practices of sustainable development into my work as an engineer. I am thankful to be a Gates Cambridge Scholar alum, and grateful to keep learning from shared lessons and experiences with fellow scholars around the world.

Previous Education

The University of Iowa

My PhD work seeks to develop new insights on adaptation design measures that are effective both in the short term and in the long term future to the effects of climate change, in a carbon constrained environment of a developing country. A challenge that designers face in developing countries now is how to design to achieve the required habitable conditions of spaces in a building’s lifetime without compromising on energy consumption in the urbanization process. I believe that developing countries offer enormous potential to adopt radical solutions aimed at achieving energy conservative building design geared towards mitigation of climate change on one hand and on the other hand designed to become adjusted to many changes in a building’s lifetime including changing environmental conditions (e.g. climate change and effects of urbanisation), social-economic developments, changes in legislation, and technological advances among others.

I am honored to be joining the Gates community to study for an MPhil in Nuclear Energy at Cambridge. Nuclear Energy has the potential to serve as a clean, cost-effective baseline source in a diverse, global energy profile. The first steps toward this desirable end state are two-fold: to establish safe, long-term nuclear waste disposal methods, and to garner informed societal support for the responsible use of nuclear energy. At Cambridge, I will focus on these challenges, and consider the safety mechanisms employed by the US Navy's submarine fleet, evaluating their potential for application in the civilian sector. I will then complete a year of technical nuclear power schooling and eventually serve as an officer on nuclear submarines. I hope this unique combination of experiences will allow me to contribute to the nuclear energy technologies and policy that could potentially transform the global energy industry and, subsequently, the world's economic and political landscape.

As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, I studied Earth sciences to better understand the fundamental processes underpinning the natural environment and how modern society has pushed those processes to the brink of collapse. I learned that one of the greatest sources of unsustainable natural resource consumption is modern agriculture. This was an auspicious realization, as the study of agriculture overlaps with many interesting disciplines from nutrition to environmental sustainability to biotechnology. I therefore decided to study agricultural sciences as a masters student at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I researched how light quality influences plant growth and resilience to stress. As a natural progression, I then moved into commercial greenhouse hydroponics where I worked to optimize environmental conditions most suitable for crop growth. I then returned to more academic pursuits at the Carnegie Institution for Science, where I continued to investigate how plants respond to environmental stress. At Cambridge, I will explore how plants anticipate and adapt to environmental fluctuations. Insights gained from this research will support continued efforts to breed more efficient, productive, and sustainable crops.

Previous Education

Hebrew University of Jerusalem Agricultural Sciences 2018
Northwestern University Earth & Planetary Sciences 2013

During the past two years, I was a paralegal for the federal public defenders in Brooklyn, New York. Working with hundreds of indigent clients charged with a variety of federal crimes, I developed a strong interest in young adult offenders. I plan to focus my future research on juvenile offenders, targeting the underlying factors contributing to crime and ideally working to develop effective interventions to alter their trajectory. I am curious about the British approach to sentencing and rehabilitation, particularly for young offenders. After this year, I plan to attend law school in the United States and become a public defender or alternatively work on reducing recidivism at a nonprofit organization.