Directory

Isaac Holeman is a designer-researcher striving for global health equity. As a social scientist and co-founder of the social enterprise Medic Mobile, his work is about seeing complex health systems from the perspective of the poor and marginalized and responding pragmatically. Medic Mobile received a Skoll award in 2014, and Isaac has been featured twice in Forbes Magazine as one of the top 30 social entrepreneurs under the age of 30. He is an active speaker and consultant, and his writing has been featured in outlets such as National Geographic, the Oregonian and the Harvard Global Health Review. He continues to practice design at Medic Mobile, while pursuing research projects as a fellow of the University of Edinburgh’s Global Health Academy and as a Gates Cambridge Scholar in innovation, strategy and organization.

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, I am a mixed-race scholar who has always been interested in narratives of identity. I attended the University of Houston where I completed a BA in English Literature with minors in Classics and Creative Work. In various research projects at the University of Houston and Harvard, I have explored why and how Black artists engage with antiquity to reimagine new art forms and critique the historical whiteness of these spaces from the inside. At Cambridge, I am pursuing an MPhil in Classics to study at the intersection of Black feminist theory and classical reception to better understand antiquity’s influence on modern conceptions of race, literature, and culture. I will explore how contemporary Black women writers across the African diaspora engage with Homer’s Odyssey to grapple with complex paradoxes of home and movement throughout histories of oppression. Moreover, I integrate the study of Homer's texts themselves to demonstrate how a Black feminist framework can reveal new interpretations of the Odyssey. I am incredibly honored to join the Gates Cambridge community and excited to learn from and collaborate with scholars invested in building a better future.

Previous Education

Harvard University Classics
University of Houston English Literature

I grew up in New York, and went on to do my undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Materials Science & Engineering, with minors in Physics and Leadership Studies. During that time, I performed research at a variety of institutions, including Syracuse University, the University of California in Santa Barbara, and MIT. I came to Cambridge in 2005 on a Winston Churchill Scholarship to complete my MPhil in Semiconductor Physics working with Prof Sir Colin Humphreys in the Materials department. I stayed on to pursue my PhD in Prof Humphreys’ research group working on gallium nitride semiconductor light emitting devices, funded by a Gates Cambridge scholarship. This work plays an important role in the solution to the global energy crisis (and makes me feel like I'm saving the world). I have also been active in applying my scientific background toward other social enterprises such as policy-making, having started an energy policy think-tank in 2009, and business.

Links

http://absciences.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanhollander
http://twitter.com/hollanderjon

My PhD focuses on the reception of classical atomist philosophy in eighteenth-century France and its deployment in philosophical debates concerning the nature of politics and citizenship. I am particularly interested in the impact of Epicurean and Lucretian themes on the political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

My work is in computational linguistics. I am trying to develop better computational models of speech and language to produce more natural sounding synthesized speech. I have worked on new models of intonation and rhythm. Now I am concentrating on natural language processing and information extraction to try to produce a better representation of meaning within a text document. This would allow a speech synthesizer to have better accuracy in assigning intonation and rhythm.

Summary biography:

Andre completed a BSc degree in Molecular Biotechnology before he focused towards computational biology during his MSc. After graduating from Heidelberg University in 2017, he started his PhD at Cambridge where his research is investigating open questions in the evolution of B vitamin dependencies, microbial interactions as well as the role of transposable elements in algae by applying multi-genomic approaches. In parallel, he is co-leader of the citizen science project PuntSeq (www.puntseq.co.uk) which is employing novel real-time DNA sequencing to monitor microbial composition of freshwater sources. Andre became a Gates Cambridge Scholar in 2016.

Philosophy & Research:

Our world is facing many threats including pollution, climate change, world hunger, etc.. It is my conviction that decisive action must be taken by us in order to influence how the world will change and to provide an acceptable future for our descendants. Thus, I understand my passion in natural sciences as a mission to understand nature's bigger concepts, to develop new techniques and helpful applications that will improve the future. I was born in a small town in Germany and ever since grammar school I feel a strong interest in natural sciences. As a BSc and MSc student studying Molecular Biotechnology at Heidelberg University, I gained profound education in the fields of modern life sciences and obtained intensive research experiences in the interdisciplinary areas of bioinformatics, biophysics and drug discovery. I joined many international labs and conducted diverse studies covering topics such as optical nanoscopy, cancer research, bacterial signalling and algal ecology. Subsequent to our recent discovery of vitamin B12 remodelling in algae, my PhD at Cambridge will continue existing work on algal-bacterial interaction. My dissertation aims to significantly improve the understanding of algal metabolism and bacterial signalling in order to gain fundamental insights in B12 cycling, algal-bacterial symbiosis and complex microbial ecosystems which is essential for many biotechnological purposes such as the production of renewable energy sources or B12 supplying medicine.

Previous Education

University of Heidelberg

Links

https://www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/directory/holzer-andre
https://www.facebook.com/AndreHolzerGates
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andre-holzer-gatescambridge

I am a practicing ophthalmologist in San Francisco. My interests include new innovations in glaucoma surgery and implementation of teleophthalmology in Nepal.

Previous Education

Johns Hopkins University
Stanford University

I grew up in central Ohio and completed my undergraduate studies in Art History and Classical Languages at the College of Wooster. While there, I was exposed to the study of art and its historical and cultural importance. Entering Cambridge’s MPhil Program in Art History upon my graduation ingrained in me a love for research and writing, and I am honored to be studying once again at Cambridge. During my PhD, I will examine the presence of painted fictive stone in Italian Renaissance altarpieces and the notion of pseudo-materiality, engaging with ancient and medieval ideas concerning natural and holy matter, reality, and the divine. Through this research, I hope to glean greater insight into our own contemporary relationships with reality, meaning, and systems of belief in the face of rapidly evolving methods of communication and the development of artificial intelligence.

Previous Education

The College of Wooster Classics/ Art History
University of Cambridge History of Art

I am a junior group leader of the Molecular and Cellular basis of Behavior group at MDC in Berlin. We are interested in the biology underlying social and emotional behaviors. We study how the biological signature of neural networks regulating these behaviors differ based on genetic background or previous experiences, and how this influences the response to social situations.

I studied philosophy and law at the University of Sydney. After finishing my undergraduate degrees, I completed a Master of Laws by research, also at the University of Sydney. In my research I asked how we should think about law, whether constructive interpretation was necessary and, if it was, whether it could generate truths. While completing my Master of Laws, I also worked as a lawyer at one of Australasia’s top law firms and volunteered with the Refugee Advice and Casework Service, the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre and Salvos Legal Humanitarian. This year, I have been studying for my MPhil in Philosophy at Cambridge. My current research is about reasons, personality, luck, choices and justice. I will continue that research in my PHD, asking questions about the relationships between normativity and the self, choice and identity, and luck and responsibility. I hope to use my research to develop a framework for thinking about the choices that matter from the perspective of distributive justice. I am immensely grateful to Gates Cambridge for giving me the opportunity to pursue my research and for inviting me to join such a wonderful community of scholars.

Previous Education

University of Sydney
University of Cambridge

Growing up in a military family, I knew from a very young age that I wanted to serve in the military. I followed this dream and my passion for engineering to the United States Naval Academy where I studied nuclear engineering. Upon graduation, I was commissioned to serve in the submarine community. I am fortunate enough to continue my education at Cambridge University where I plan to study Nuclear Energy. My research interests include developing new technologies to improve the reliability, efficiency and safety of nuclear reactors, as well as promoting engineering education. In my career, I hope to combine technical and operational expertise learned from the operation of nuclear power plants in the submarine environment to promote the safe use of nuclear energy as a reliable green technology. As a woman in the nuclear engineering field, I hope to inspire girls to pursue science, technology and engineering careers. I am incredibly honored to be a part of the Gates Cambridge scholar program and work together with young leaders dedicated to serving others.

Previous Education

United States Naval Academy

I have always been fascinated in how to approach complex problems. This fascination first led me to study Civil Engineering as an undergraduate, and Engineering for Sustainable Development as a graduate, where I was able to gain skills that would allow me to contribute to real challenges in the world. Over recent years, I have put these skills into practice while working with NGOs and the International Committee of the Red Cross in countries affected by disaster or conflict in southern and eastern Africa and the Middle East. During these experiences, I have seen how challenging it can be to respond to complex urban crises where, over time, the additional strain on services and the eventual degradation of public infrastructure compounds the likelihood of wide-scale public health crises. At Cambridge, my research will explore how to strengthen the resilience of essential infrastructure and services in fragile urban contexts which are faced by a convergence of protracted insecurity, climate risks, and environmental degradation. I am honoured to have been selected for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and I look forward to joining a cohort of inspirational leaders and scholars who are contributing to real change in this world.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Eng. for Sust. Development 2017
University of British Columbia Civil Engineering 2013

As an undergraduate neuroscience major at Amherst College I developed a deep interest is the field of early neurological development and, in particular, how the plasticity inherent in this period may be harnessed to create therapies for neurological disorders. I am looking forward to continuing my study of developmental neurobiology as an MPhil student at Cambridge in the lab of Dr. Andrea Brand, where I will be exploring the genetics underlying neural stem cell differentiation and how an understanding of these mechanisms may be used to unlock cells’ regenerative potential. I hope that this experience will provide me with a solid grounding in the basic molecular biology that governs stem cell transitions, giving me a strong background on which I will be able to build in my future work. After Cambridge, I plan to pursue a career as a physician-scientist studying neurodevelopmental disorders and working to translate basic scientific discoveries from the bench to the bedside.

Previous Education

Amherst College BA in Neuroscience 2010

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended Santa Clara University. During my undergraduate studies, I earned a B.S. in Political Science and Ethnic Studies with a minor in Religious Studies. Through my courses and work as a research assistant, I became interested in using academia and scholarship to fight against the erasure of Black women’s narratives. As a student of Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies at Cambridge, I plan to continue this work by reexamining the Enlightenment with an expanded historiographical perspective to include those who have seldomly been uplifted as representations of the era: enslaved women. Ultimately, my objective is to explore how women with absolutely no social or legal control over their own bodies, minds, and spirits confronted an era centered around freedom and the pursuit of happiness. My hope is that this kind of archival excavation will help us address current international and personal traumas with policy solutions contextualized by historical circumstances. I am incredibly honored to have the opportunity to join the Gates Cambridge community and conduct research in an environment that prioritizes equity and global social change.

Previous Education

Santa Clara University POLI SCI & ETHN STDS 2021

I graduated with my MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2013 and with my medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. I completed residency training in Adult Psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance, and a fellowship in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. I am interested social determinants of mental health and in improving psychiatric care for immigrants.

Previous Education

Johns Hopkins University 2014
University of Michigan Neuroscience 2009

Previous Education

California Institute of Technology