Directory

Among all of the Social Sciences, Social Anthropology has certain unique characteristics that captivated me as an undergraduate student at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in Brazil. Instead of defining social life in advance of its enquiry, the discipline defies any static conception or model of it. It does so by investigating the images that different peoples construct of humanity and society. Anthropological knowledge is thus inseparable from the countless situated knowledges it studies, which are irreducible to simple research objects. The people with whom I have decided to ally myself in this joint project are the Indigenous peoples of Lowland South America and, more specifically, the Boe (Bororo), inhabitants of the Central-Brazilian plateau. During my master's degree at the Museu Nacional (UFRJ), I investigated how kinship relations and name transmission weave the intricate socio-cosmological architecture of the Bororo. In my PhD at the University of Cambridge, I will produce an ethnographic account based on long-term fieldwork of this people's ritual life.

Previous Education

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Social Anthropology 2021
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Social Sciences 2019

Gates Cambridge Scholar 2011-15; Editor-in-Chief, The Scholar, 2011-2012; VP, Scholars' Council 2013-14

Current Affiliation: Clinical Associate Professor and Director of Global Awards, NYU Shanghai

Dr. Kent is a translational neuroscientist researching Alzheimer's disease, sleep, and circadian rhythms. She is currently a Research Fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Previous Education

Yale University M.Sc. Behavioral Neuroscience 2011
Simon Fraser University B.A. Psychology 2009

The Gates has provided me with an incredible opportunity to explore connections between my undergraduate work in literary theory and the history of science. I hope to chart the historical development and internal logic of such humanistic pursuits as poetry and criticism as they coincide with developments in the more "proper" sciences.

My passion is helping our society become more sustainable; I work with large companies to decrease their environmental and social impacts.

I was born in South Korea and grew up in the Philippines. I chose to attend college in the United States and specifically Yale for the quality of the liberal arts education offered in these places, and, by a similar line of reasoning, chose to major in the Humanities. Like many a hero (or antihero) of the humanistic tradition, I wandered through several disciplines, areas and eras of interest, but I found myself returning time and again to the works of Plato. At Cambridge, I hope to continue reading Plato, focusing this time on Plato’s use of stories and myth within the context of his political philosophy, as well as the context of intellectual history at large. The issue at stake - namely, the relationship between stories and the communities that hear them - is one that is particularly dear to my heart. I hope, one day, to share my love of reading and writing on a global scale, beginning with the Cambridge community.

I am a Teaching and Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Through my teaching role, I am pursuing work on epistemic justice and the promotion of Southern knowledges (plural) and epistemologies. In this regard, I have co-initiated an international seminar series entitled: 'The politics of knowledge building in education and international development', at the Faculty of Education through which I aim to generate conversations around the politics and hegemonies of global knowledge production in my field.
I completed my Ph.D. on gender, education, and development from the Faculty of Education, the University of Cambridge in 2020. My Ph.D. research focused on women's agency in highly constrained circumstances. I have drawn extensively on the Human Development and Capability Approach in this work.
More recently, my research has focused on social justice and equity in education within the UK context. Acknowledging that children from ethnic minority backgrounds are worst affected by Covid-19, I am engaged in research on the learning experiences of children from ethnic minority families in England. In this regard, I am involved in a project funded through the Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme on the learning experiences of secondary school children from ethnic minority families in England during Covid-19.
I am also a lead researcher with colleagues from the universities of Durham and Newcastle on a British Academy-funded project, 'Bridging the Local and Global: Women’s Spaces and Collectives' with women from ethnic minority families in the UK. This project aims to understand how women from ethnic minority families in England create collective spaces for action and reflection, for themselves and their families. Through this research, we seek to argue that any global understanding of women's efforts needs to seek knowledge from women themselves in their local contexts.

Previous Education

Institute of Management Sciences Peshawar
University of Peshawar

Links

https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/khalid
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliya-khalid-b2b19463

Although most areas of medicine appeal to me, I have developed a deep interest in public health and epidemiology. I have worked on projects involving surveillance of Pneumococcal and Hemophilus Influenzae and have also developed an interest relating to epidemiology of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. An Mphil in Epidemiology will be an ideal stepping stone for future research work as I look forward towards a career seeking a solution to the public health issues facing the society.

I am a Sociologist of Education with a particular focus on opportunity, equity, and constraints in education systems. I work at the intersection of research, policy, and design to promote equitable access to education.

My research has previously explored how schooling in a child’s non-native language can make learning inaccessible, how household and gender norms complicate accessing higher education for female students, and the impact of funding and governance on the success of schools. Most notably, in my four years of working with The Citizens Foundation, Pakistan, I designed and implemented a program to provide students with the right to learn in their own language.

My PhD at the University of Cambridge focuses on the risks, resilience, and future life chances of out-of-school children in my home country, Pakistan.

Previous Education

University of Oxford Social Policy 2023
Stanford University Sociology and Education 2021

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/minha-khan-32a129a6

Safwan A. Khan is a public policy professional specializing
in government affairs, international development, and humanitarian support. Experienced in policy advisory, programme management, and public affairs, Safwan has worked with governments, third sectors, and multilateral institutions in Canada, South Asia, UK, Australia, and the MENA region. Based in Toronto, he is currently associated with UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency.

Previous Education

University of Karachi
Quaid-I-Azam University

Links

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/safwan-a-khan-779b2b48

Samir is a Health innovation and Market Access professional with more than seven years of experience in the commercialisation and market access of futuristic technologies spanning Genomics and AI-led Discovery, Diagnostics, Digital patient wellness and healthcare system transformation.
Samir is the co-founder of Lighthouse Innovations Ltd – an Oxford-based innovation and access strategy house advising start-ups and entrepreneurs within and beyond the NHS-industry ecosystem of the UK.
Samir has advised top 10 FTSE Global Life Sciences and Healthcare Commercial Leads and >50 growing start-ups on international market access, payer engagement on value-based pricing and risk-sharing agreements. His experiences span oncology, rare diseases, mental health, and chronic inflammatory indications.
Samir received the Bill and Melinda Gates Fellowship Award to complete his PhD in Pharmacology at Cambridge University. Samir has co-authored papers in Nature and is co-inventor of a vaccine for Hepatitis E in India and drug targets in neurological and cardio-vascular diseases in the UK.

After graduating from Stanford University in 2009 with a B.A. in History and International Relations I returned home to Karachi, Pakistan to work in education and development. These past three years, as an educator and reformer, I have found myself confronting and tackling an educational landscape deeply scarred by inequity, political repression and poor policy. At Cambridge, I hope to critically examine theoretical, local and global conversations on policy in relation to democracy and justice. My key research interests are methods to address inequities in education at the class and gendered level by increasing access and quality. After completing the MPhil I intend to return to Pakistan and pursue a career in education policy and planning.

My work focuses on the epistemic, moral, and political significance of machine learning in science and public life. Tackling these issues leads me to confront fundamental questions concerning the role non-epistemic values in science and technology, the relationship between various conceptions of objectivity and trust, and the nature and importance of uncertainy estimates for responsibility.

Previous Education

University of Houston Philosophy 2021
University of Houston Philosophy 2019

My research focuses on maps of cholera outbreaks made by physicians in nineteenth-century Britain. I aim to understand the role of medical cartography in shaping public perceptions of disease and contributing to public health reform. My work is driven by my experiences in public health and biomedical research. As an undergraduate at Stanford, I conducted research on neurodegenerative diseases, studied the connections between human and environmental health in the Galápagos Islands and Tanzania, and volunteered at local community health centers. My experiences raised questions that were as much social as scientific: What factors explain unequal distribution of disease? How is research communicated to the public? These questions drew me to the history of science and medicine. History reminds us that the way we present scientific information can significantly impact public perceptions of health and disease. We must work to illuminate health disparities in a way that focuses on addressing social determinants of health, rather than generating stigmas. Studying how public health messages have been delivered and acted upon in the past can help us to improve future initiatives. At Cambridge I will pursue an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine. As an aspiring historian and physician, I hope to pursue work that will enable the medical community to approach health disparities with greater historical context, ultimately providing more holistic, ethical, and effective solutions. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to join a community of scholars committed to improving the lives of others.

Previous Education

Stanford University

My volunteer experience at San Francisco General Hospital largely inspired my decision to pursue medical science and sparked my interest in cancer. Patients often told me about how cancer had devastated their families, and how treatments were out of reach financially. I developed an academic interest in cancer from research talks given at a summer internship, after which I began to realize the rather horrifying prospect of how little we know about cancer. These experiences have driven me to pursue cancer immunology research, which I believe is one of the most promising frontiers for better treatments that utilize the body’s own immune defenses to fight cancer. At Cambridge, I studied the role of the Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway, which is abnormally activated in a number of cancers and has been shown to play a key role in immune responses to cancer, in natural killer (NK) cells. I conducted my MPhil work in the lab of Dr. Maike de la Roche at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. Currently, I am an MD/PhD student at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, USA, and my long term goal is to become an independent physician-scientist. Aside from science and medicine, my interests include music, travel, golf, running, and writing. I am incredibly grateful to be a part of the Gates Cambridge community and wholeheartedly accept its commitment to improving the lives of others.

Previous Education

University of California, Berkeley

Links

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

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