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I grew up in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir which is the most militarised zone in the world. It is a region of territorial conflict between India, Pakistan and China, all of whom claim it to be an integral part of their nation, a situation which has led to several full-blown wars between the three countries. I will not go into the easily available list of heinous crimes that the people of this region have been subject because of the “national” integration struggles on part of each of the three governments here, I laid this background only to say that research projects on Kashmir promise to present invigorating and timely studies on the nature of settler colonialism and nationalisms; as well as provide a critique of nation state and modern democracies.In my PhD, I hope to look at the notorious process of landscaping Kashmir. Long known as a paradise on earth, foreigners have used landscape as a tool to establish a national symbology concurrent with their rule. My research interests, that I will be carrying out in the University of Cambridge, will focus on the vocabulary of landscapes as it is emerges in the cultural production emanating from the region, or in the words, produced by Kashmiri creators themselves. Keeping in mind the tendency of all nationalisms to homogenise marginalities and invisibilise hierarchies in the parent society, I will try to delineate the visual vocabularies of the resisting nationalism in Kashmir - what are the urban and rural landscapes they tend to show, and what are the various political struggles associated with it. I want to make deeper enquiries into how the dynamics of caste, class, religion, ethnicities, and sexual orientation plays out in the articulation of a resisting nationalism in Kashmir. And probe for the possibilities for its broader, affective, non-uniform possibilities.

Previous Education

Jamia Millia Islamia English 2023
University of Dehli (Lady Shri Ram College) English 2020

I was raised in New Zealand, and studied science at university with the goal of doing research in condensed matter physics. During my time at Cambridge I completed part iii of the mathematics tripos, and exposure to a broad range of research topics led me to pursue a career studying living systems from a physics based perspective. For my doctoral work I am studying microbial growth, and am excited to be a part of the burgeoning field of quantitative biology.

I spent my childhood outdoors, digging up every rock I could find and exploring the mountains of south-eastern Pennsylvania. These experiences grew into a lifelong desire to understand the most basic processes that shape the earth. As an undergraduate, I have conducted research on a variety of related topics, from sea level rise to a more recent gas monitoring study of geothermal features at Yellowstone National Park. As a 2016-18 Hollings Scholar, I interned with a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research team to model seafloor deformation leading up the 2015 eruption of Axial Seamount in the Northeast Pacific. From 2015 through 2018, I have worked to reassess the structure, scale, and environmental impact of the Deccan Traps, an extinct volcanic province in western India. During my PhD I will seek to explain the systematic behaviour of trace metals in active volcanic systems. This model will synthesize existing trace metal emissions data with novel field and laboratory techniques. The aim of this project is to further our understanding of ore body development and the impact of volcanic emissions on human health. This work also has the potential to provide new tools monitoring agencies can use to forecast eruptions. I am incredibly honoured to receive the prestigious Gates Cambridge scholarship, and I look forward to drawing on the diverse perspectives of my fellow scholars as I work to safeguard volcanically-threatened populations.

Previous Education

Drexel University

Previous Education

Harvard University

Previous Education

University of Pennsylvania BAS Int'l Econ & Fin Systems Engineering, BSE Finance Statistics 2002

Growing up in Damascus, Syria, I immigrated to the United States when I was seventeen in September 2015. Completing my senior year at Wheeling High School in the U.S., I enrolled at UIC pursuing a bachelor's degree with a double major in biology and chemistry and minor in mathematics. I was fascinated by the immense potential in developing novel analytical chemical and mathematical tools to solve pressing biomedical problems. Starting my first year of college, I have conducted research on diabetic eye disease while volunteering at an ophthalmology clinic to serve patients of the same life-changing, blindness-causing disease conditions. Through these experiences, I found an articulation of my interests in patient-driven research that considers both the biochemical and socioeconomic lenses. Through the MPhil in Genomic Medicine at Cambridge, I hope to visualize the molecular, analytical, statistical, social, and clinical challenges facing the use of omics-based personalized medicine across everyday clinics. Professionally, I intend to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. advancing biochemical and computational technologies to address currently incurable diseases, and contributing to the crafting of a new era of healthcare without disparities.

Previous Education

University of Illinois-Chicago Biology and Chemistry 2020

David Baron was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. At 16, he immigrated to the U.S. with his mother and brother, aspiring to be the first in his family to attend college. To support his family, he left high school to work full-time, yet continued studying mathematics in his free time, driven by a deep curiosity and love for the subject. After a year, he returned to school with renewed determination, excelling academically while giving back to his community as an ESL instructor and conducting materials engineering research at Penn State University. His dedication led him to become a Questbridge Match Scholar, earning a full-ride scholarship to Williams College. Before attending, he served three years as a combat medic in the U.S. Army National Guard, an experience that deepened his resilience and commitment to mentorship. At Williams, he pursued the mathematics major, mentored students from underrepresented backgrounds, and studied at Oxford University during his junior year. Set to graduate with honors in 2025, he will begin a PhD in applied mathematics at Harvard University after completing his MPhil in Mathematics at Cambridge.

Previous Education

Williams College Mathematics

My experiences travelling between my native country of Colombia and the United States have made me distinctly aware of the inequalities among different countries. These experiences combined with my interest in the natural environment have formed the foundation of my interest in the field of development and environment. I hope that my research at Cambridge will provide me with the tools to influence development patterns so that they become more environmentally and socially responsible.

I am a multidisciplinary decolonial feminist scholar with an atypical academic journey, a Gates Scholar, and the former leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Perth (Western Australia). My 2023 MA (by Research) in Historical Studies, which was my first university degree, investigated the dress choices of Creole Mauritian women. My PhD aims to further dissect this sartorial narrative, emphasising its aspects of gendered, racial, and cultural resistance. I am also a textile artist, known professionally as Ubuntu Fibres, and many of my published works appear under the name ‘Christelle Collet’. I am committed to exploring and advocating for the identity and voice of Black women, particularly within the context of Mauritian colonial and patriarchal legacies and their persistent socio-cultural effects. My research intertwines community engagement and artistic methodologies. Before my MA, I engaged in support and advocacy for various communities, later transitioning into diversity and inclusion education and consultancy. I led ‘Project One Heart’, focusing on the stories of families of Colour and families of marginalised genders across Australia. Additionally, I contributed to various research projects, publishing on the narratives of Black Creole women, their defiance against oppressive systems, and intersectionality within the Indian Ocean region. Notably, I co-authored and co-edited the groundbreaking book 'Women in the Making of Mauritian History' in 2021.

Previous Education

University of Mauritius History (Hist6000) 2023
University of Western Australia Law & Society/Political Scienc

Links

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

I am from Hyattsville, Maryland and most of my childhood summers were spent in the humid climates of Guatemala––saturated in the culture of storytelling. During my studies at Towson University, I returned to the stories of my girlhood. As a recipient of the Leadership for Public Good Fellowship, I collected the oral histories of Guatemalans on their encounters with regional folkloric figures, amplifying occluded voices via cultural/archival work. I built upon my fieldwork in my thesis, where I examined the function of orature and its products as counterstories and symptoms of colonial trauma. During my MPhil at Cambridge, I will broaden my work to the larger Central American diaspora to exhibit how orature and its practice operate as a collective narratological and rhetorical (method)ology that opposition colonial narratives, allowing for new ones to emerge. By re-reckoning the violence represented in the literary and lived, I seek to reassess how narratives are constructed and taught globally through the language and experiences of the oppressed to highlight the anticolonial possibilities extant in intergenerational stories. I am honored to join the Gates Cambridge community, where we all look forward to building a better world.

Previous Education

Towson University English with Literature Track 2022
Towson University Psychology 2022

I graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in May 2010 with a B.S. in Systems Engineering. Driven by a passion for curbing the effects of anthropogenic climate change while meeting growing global energy demands, I sat for an MPhil in Nuclear Engineering at Cambridge, conducting fuel cycle research on a thorium reactor concept known as the Accelerator Driven Subcritical Reactor. I am currently serving as a submarine warfare officer in the U.S. Navy.

Previous Education

University of British Columbia Bachelor of Arts (Honours) 2012

Treating injuries and diseases of the brain and spinal cord remains one of the greatest challenges in medicine, with current therapies being insufficient to promote recovery in most instances of damage to the brain. My work at Cambridge aims to identify new targets for biochemical and genetic therapies for regenerating functional connectivity of neurons at the injury site by focusing on the genetic basis of the interaction between neurons and astrocytes in the injured central nervous system. After Cambridge, I will return to the United States to pursue a joint MD/PhD and continue researching treatment modalities for central nervous system injury and disease. Eventually, I hope to work as a physician-scientist in a setting similar to the Brain Repair Centre at Cambridge, searching for and then implementing a “cure” for previously debilitating or fatal diseases and injuries of the brain and spinal cord.

Previous Education

Princeton University Neuroscience and Molecular Biology 2012

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-barson-701b5b19/?originalSubdomain=uk

How do we leverage the widest possible array of human ability to confront the challenges we face as a species? Through the lens of my self-identify as a neuro- and physio- divergent individual, I am driven to seek deeper understandings of the very nature of human ability--how it can be fostered, and how it is stifled. As an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts, I constructed an individualized program around the study of ability, continuing this interdisciplinary work with a Cambridge MPhil. For 12 years I have been part of a participatory-action research team at Boston University that designed and implemented programs to teach self-advocacy skills to youth with "disabilities." Informed by these experiences, I have become a dis/diff-ability activist and speaker, and I am currently a writing book called, "The Theory of Everyone." My PhD research will explore innovative methodologies to identify and leverage diverse human abilities - informed, I hope, by insights from this extraordinary circle that I am honored to join. Ultimately, I seek to become an academic activist and agent of change in the structures and organisations that impact the development of all human potential.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Health Medicine and Society 2020
University of Massachusetts at Amherst Social Phil. Comm. Theory 2018
Harvard Extension School Advanced Soc. Science Research 2018

Previous Education

University of Cambridge BA Theology and Religious Studies 2001
University of Delhi B.Sc. Physics 1998