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One fascinating question in neurobiological sciences is how the brain develops, providing the basis for correct information flow and integration that enables us to think, sense, and feel. My research project deals with one aspect of this exciting field of investigation, namely how neurons send processes to their synaptic partners in the embryonic central nervous system to form functional neuronal networks.

I’m a history graduate from the University of Sydney with a strong interest in studying global history from the perspective of ordinary people. My research focus is the early modern Spanish empire, which is an interest I developed after travelling extensively through Latin America. My PhD thesis will examine the experience of empire in the Philippines and broader Spanish Pacific from the vantage point of non-Europeans. I strongly believe that we study history not just to understand the past but also to engage in the kind of future that we want to create. My research aims to break down some our commonly held assumptions of how global history developed by examining the frontiers of early modern empires that have often been marginalised within broader historiography. I have been active in projects of community building among history students in Australia and worked as a researcher at a large trade union on campaigns that fight the inequality experienced by Australia’s lowest paid workers.

My earliest memories in New England were of my older brothers teaching me how to play ice hockey, motivating me to become a girls hockey coach. I am fascinated by the malleability of our memories. In particular, how do changes in physical health, mental well-being, or age influence how memories are formed, retrieved, and retained? I was inspired to study neuroscience after observing family members suffer from frontotemporal dementia, schizophrenia, and PTSD. I researched how the pandemic influenced the relationship between sleep and personal memory at Boston College’s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. This motivated my master’s research on the role of sleep stages in the consolidation of emotional memories across the lifespan. I am honored to join the Gates Cambridge Scholar Community. At Cambridge, in Professor Jon Simons’ laboratory, I will investigate how sleep architecture and structure influence brain activation and connectivity when retrieving emotional memories. My long-term aim is to discover interventions that positively influence those suffering from maladaptive memories underlying conditions including anxiety, PTSD, and Alzheimer’s, that could also enhance the health of personal memories for all.

Previous Education

Boston College Psychology 2023
Boston College Neuroscience 2022

My research at the University of Cambridge will focus on climate responsive design attributes in the tropics, Zanzibar in particular. With continued climate change, buildings will need to mitigate and adapt without necessarily increasing their energy consumption. Correlation between design parameters and material specifications with the internal environments architects create, in terms of human comfort is fundamental in achieving habitable conditions in buildings, without mechanical systems, most of which have high energy loads and carbon emissions contributing to global warming. I will investigate the dichotomies of embracing new technologies and traditional constructions in a bid to postulate a low carbon contemporary architecture addressing occupant comfort, health and associated productivity. I am indeed grateful to continue being part of the Gates Cambridge community.

Previous Education

University of Nairobi
University of Cambridge

After growing up in Woodruff, South Carolina, I attended Wofford College and obtained a degree in biology with a concentration in neuroscience. While at Wofford, I developed a passion for studying the brain and diseases that plague it. This passion has grown during my three years as a medical student at Wake Forest School of Medicine. In particular, after participating in the Pediatric Oncology Education program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, I developed a strong interest in neuro-oncology research. As a Gates Cambridge Scholar, I will study the genomics of glioblastoma and characteristics of the tumor microenvironment in an effort to develop better treatment strategies for this most malignant form of brain cancer. Upon completion of my PhD, I will return to Wake Forest for my final year of medical school. I hope to establish a career in pediatric neurosurgery or pediatric neurology and plan to employ the lessons I learn at the University of Cambridge to become a physician-scientist committed to providing improved outcomes for brain tumor patients throughout the world. I am humbled and honored to be joining a dynamic and interdisciplinary group of scholars committed to harnessing research for social good.

Previous Education

Wofford College
Wake Forest School of Medicine

I graduated from Stanford with a focus on energy and environmental policy. Afterwards, I moved to Mongolia to work with a professor of mine who had become the Ambassador at Large of Mongolia. For three years I worked on shaping regional energy and environmental policies alongside numerous ministers, parliament members, and policy experts. My focus was on nuclear energy – in particular, how to sustainably mine uranium and increase international security and cooperation. In this position, I was a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo’s (Todai) Department of Nuclear Engineering, as well as a visiting lecturer to PhD students for a Seoul National University and Todai summer school on multilateral energy cooperation. I was in Japan when the Fukushima Daiichi disaster struck, and in the ensuing instability became deeply involved in nuclear education as well as in multi-country policy talks. Today, I am based in my mother's home country of Ecuador and work in environmental risk management and biodiversity conservation efforts for USAID and USAID-funded projects. I often travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I coordinate the risk management component of a Food for Peace project. I have also traveled to Honduras and Malawi to author environmental assessments, and to Haiti, El Salvador, and Paraguay to lead environmental compliance workshops. At Cambridge, I hope to research methods for bridging the gap between energy politics and environmental sustainability.

Previous Education

Stanford University

I am working towards a PhD in Medieval History at the University of Cambridge, focusing on Carolingian documents and literacy during the ninth century.

I grew up in Athens, Georgia and earned a bachelor’s degree in Classical Languages at the University of Georgia. Both of my parents are classical musicians, and because of this a deep love for sound, language, and music has shaped my research interests in Classics. As I pursue an MPhil degree in Classics at Cambridge, I plan to write a thesis on Augustine’s theories of music. I believe that studying the role and function of music is worthwhile because it means exploring how art touches the emotions and influences human behavior. The arts assume that life has meaning, they unify human beings around hope, and they foster philosophical principles useful for action in the world. Music in particular communicates emotions that link each human mind to something greater than itself. I hope that a thesis on ancient musicology, investigating the connection between beauty and emotion, can help illuminate the role of music today. I am honored to join the Gates Cambridge community as I commit myself to a forward-looking examination of ancient musicology, believing that both literature and music prepare individuals for thought and action in the world.

Previous Education

University of Georgia Classics 2021

My life aim is to improve humanity through scientific endeavour. At the age of 11 I met Dr Takyama an eminent HIV researcher who inspired me to develop my scientific curiosity; years later volunteering at St Vincent de Paul, I observed my small services improve lives. This motivated my desire to use scientific research to magnify my contribution and advance the welfare of humanity. I will achieve this through my two interests, science and policy; utilising medical research and implementation in public policy with industrial collaboration to maximise the benefits globally. I graduated University of Sydney Bachelor Advanced Science Arts, 1st class honours, honours roll Biochemistry, Government & International Relations. I am a finalist at the World, Asia-Pacific, Australasian Women’s and Australian University Debating Championships. Vice-President of the Politics Society and Society for Molecular Biologists.Early in my undergraduate career I began researching inhibitors of breast cancer oncogene LMO4, inhibitors are a method to understand LMO4 mediated tumour progression and possible therapeutic precursors. My PhD will elucidate the molecular mechanisms of inflammatory signal transduction in the innate immune system. This will save lives of those suffering from severe inflammatory diseases including viral haemorrhagic fevers (Ebola and Dengue) and Sepsis by providing the crucial molecular structure from which new therapeutics targeting severe inflammation can be developed.

Previous Education

University of Sydney

After 4 physics-filled years at Cambridge alongside summer research at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and Caltech, I will be conducting a PhD under Dr Alpha Lee in computational drug design. Mankind has so-far synthesized 10^8 compounds, which sounds like a lot, but it is estimated that there are at least 10^20 possible drug-like molecules. Many of these could be more affordable, effective pharmaceuticals – the challenge is in getting to them! My PhD will attempt to achieve this by describing three-dimensional molecules in a continuous representation - the continuity of the representation allows it to be used as an input to conventional machine learning techniques for the prediction of novel drug candidates with optimal properties. By lowering the cost of drug discovery, this would particularly benefit the research of neglected diseases where the profit margin for drug development is low to non-existent. In the future I hope to found a computational drug discovery start-up in my hometown, Hong Kong, focusing on diseases afflicting the Asia-Pacific region. I am incredibly honoured to join the Gates community, and I look forward to meeting and exchanging ideas with like-minded scholars!

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Natural Sciences 2019

At Cambridge, I am studying mathematics in the Part III. I hope to teach and do to research, the latter in category theory. I think that it's beautiful, drawing diagrams all night long; and invigorating, teaching all day through.

I was raised in Midland, Michigan and Hudson, Ohio an avid outdoorsperson, running, skiing, hiking, and biking my way around North America. As a triple-major undergraduate in Computer Science and Engineering, Advanced Mathematics, and Statistics at Michigan State University, very little of my coursework concerned itself with climate change—yet I now see the climate crisis as the most important problem to which I can dedicate myself and my career. Having spent my academic coming-of-age studying the scientific principles of computational, mathematical, and statistical modeling, with a focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, I now hope to leverage deep learning to advance research in earth and climate science. Simultaneously, I hope to advance research in deep learning by developing methods which address the challenges posed by modeling high-dimensional spatiotemporal data. As a PhD student within the AI for the Study of Environmental Risks Centre for Doctoral Training at Cambridge and a member of the Gates Cambridge Community, I look forward to collaborating with a diverse team of bright-minded individuals towards these ends. **Andrew will commence his PhD study in 2023.

Previous Education

Michigan State University Advanced Mathematics 2022

During my Systems Engineering undergraduate studies at the United States Naval Academy, I had the opportunity to take a course in Nuclear Engineering. This course not only sparked my interest, but illuminated my undiscovered passion and fascination with nuclear energy. In pursuing a Masters in Philosophy in Nuclear Energy at Cambridge, I hope to acquire the technical expertise, policy skills, and economic knowledge necessary to lead the advancement of nuclear energy as a principal source for the energy needs of the future. The world needs abundant, clean, cheap, and safe energy, for it has implications for the preservation of our planet and also for the improvement of millions of lives. While nuclear energy is not the sole answer, it will play an integral role in meeting this global energy need. I am interested in helping to solve the social and economic obstacles associated with nuclear energy as well as overcoming the technical challenges in making safer and more efficient reactors. Following my studies at Cambridge, I will be serving in the U.S. Navy’s Submarine force and hope to use the knowledge and experience gained through post-graduate education to facilitate my development as an officer and as an agent for change around the world.

Previous Education

United States Naval Academy

As I child I grew up in a number of international contexts, most notably in Sierra Leone during the closing stages of the civil war. In these diverse settings I developed an awareness of the breadth and depth of gender-based injustice. I am completely dedicated in both my academic work and my practical activism to fighting sexism, particularly through disrupting the restrictive narratives we tell about masculinity and femininity. My main academic interests lie in the fields of theories of gender and sexuality and critical race theory. Within these areas I focus upon themes such as embodiment, spectacular politics, and the logics of hunger and desire. In this vein, my PhD in Gender Studies will examine spectacular acts of political violence committed against the self, and the narratives surrounding these acts of political self-sacrifice. I plan to focus on women who undertake such radical acts, with a specific focus on female hunger strikers. My thesis will explore the stories their ravaged bodies tell about politics, and what kinds of stories we tell about these bodies. I am particularly concerned with the powerful role discourse plays in shaping our beliefs about gender and sexuality, as evidenced in the international news media’s coverage of radical political acts. Hence, I hope that my work will challenge these dominant heteronormative discourses and find subversive, alternative readings of female political self-sacrifice.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge

As an undergraduate studying Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I researched arts and peace education and discovered the power of creativity in the classroom. I went on to work as a poet and educator, performing and teaching around the world; a journalist, focusing on peace and conflict stories; and as Executive Director of a spoken word poetry and peace education non-profit. Eventually, this work led me to begin focusing on using education to address the critical problem of men’s violence against women. Through a fusion of arts and peace education, I co-created and taught a men’s violence prevention program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for several years. In recognition of this work, I was awarded a Rotary Peace Fellowship to the University of Bradford, where I received my MA with distinction. At Cambridge, my doctoral research examined the potential benefits, challenge, and risks of arts-integrated men's violence prevention education through interviews with educators and a year-long case study of one program. I am currently working in a post-doctoral role at the London School of Economics as a researcher in the Gender, Justice and Security Hub.

Previous Education

North Carolina State University
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Bradford

I became interested in NMR during a high school summer program, and I continued to pursue this passion through my undergraduate research. During that time, I interned at Merck Research Laboratories and Bruker BioSpin. At Cambridge, I plan to study with Dr. Kevin Brindle, who is among a select few collaborating with GE Healthcare to conduct ground-breaking MRI research. In his lab, I will utilize dynamic nuclear polarization to increase the inherent insensitivity of MR techniques.