Directory

Growing up between my American and Sudanese communities ignited my passion for working in international development. I am particularly committed to socio-economic peacebuilding initiatives in Sudan and to shaping post-conflict reintegration pathways for displaced populations globally. Through my previous undergraduate and MPhil research at Cambridge, Oxford, and American University, I investigated women’s experiences of displacement and structural violence in situations of post-conflict rebuilding. With my PhD research I aim to explore the material, affective, and embodied dimensions of displacement as an enduring socio-political condition in order to reimagine our political and economic approaches to displacement. My hands-on experience in international development spans a variety of projects, including addressing housing insecurity and children’s rights in South America, implementing capacity-building programs for youth in Morocco and Palestine, and working with refugee and educational equity organizations in the US and UK.
I am honored to be awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship for a second time and look forward to continuing my work with this change-making community throughout my PhD journey.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge
American University Washington
University of Oxford

As a prospective curator, my work reflects a belief in the museum as a place of empowering representation in spite of its Western-centric foundation. At Stanford University, I helped develop four exhibitions which simultaneously spotlighted non-Western cultural objects and challenged viewers to consider the ethics of collecting practices. I also gained valuable insight as a collections intern for the Cantor Arts Center, educating young audiences through interactive workshops and helping keep the museum up-to-date with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Through Cambridge’s MPhil in Social Anthropology, I aim to develop a specific expertise in digital museum anthropology. My coursework and collaboration with Cambridge’s museums will culminate in my search for methodologies which better protect the visibility of sacred objects and human remains in digital archives. The revolutionary, inclusive museum is birthed upon the international collaboration of people and cultures. To that end, joining the Gates Cambridge community is not only symbolic but necessary to my growth as a museum worker.

Previous Education

Stanford University Art History and Archaeology

As a scholar, my research explored the US and EU's divergent regulatory policies on agricultural biotechnologies and its impact on the trade and regulatory schemes of food scarce regions in Southeast Asia. Prior to Cambridge, I worked in Southeast Asia on rural development projects. I am enormously grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from and become friends with generous, hard-working, and dynamic students from around the world through this scholarship. It's always a pleasure to give back to this community, so please feel free to let me know if I can be of any support to you.

Previous Education

University of Chicago

Links

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/aliya-bagewadi-1a954012

I’m a biologist with a deep affinity for design. Growing up in Zhengzhou and Los Angeles, both cities plagued by smog, I became keenly concerned about climate change and those who suffer its numerous consequences. As a student of biology at Georgetown University, I’ve witnessed unprecedented melting of the Greenlandic Ice Sheet and studied thriving microbial communities in the extreme cold of Antarctica. In this era of climate urgency, I’m convinced that knowledge of biology can help us build diverse, productive, and resilient human habitats. I bring this conviction to Cambridge, where I will study how people interact with bio-designed technologies, architecture, and landscapes in order to understand how designers, architects, and planners can create truly sustainable — and dignified — cities.

Previous Education

Georgetown University Scientiae Baccalaureus Biology 2017

In 2017, I worked with the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), Srinagar, where I drafted an International Law manual on Enforced Disappearances. Participating in APDP’s engagements with the OHCHR taught me about the potential of international legal institutions. However, the everyday experience of observing a state against a society reinforced the explanatory limits of purely doctrinal legal scholarship. This was a transformative experience. These encounters combined with my time at Jindal Law School and the University of Melbourne have motivated and equipped me to pursue a doctoral project interrogating the historical trajectories of international law through the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960. The Treaty, signed by India, Pakistan and the World Bank, divides access to the waters of the lucrative Indus basin flowing through the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir. Both states claim ownership over Kashmir but neither involved Kashmiri voices while dividing waters crucial to socio-cultural lives in the Valley. This project will reflect my continued political and scholarly commitment to interrogating large historiographical questions by taking the lives and aspirations of ordinary people -Kashmiris- seriously.

My experience with academic research began during my time at University of Pittsburgh, where I contributed to projects relating to learning, memory, and psychosis. At Cambridge, I am now investigating how to best leverage multimodality monitoring in neurocritical care for identification and treatment of metabolic crises following acute brain injury.

Links

https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3078-3001

I grew up in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. My schooling took place in local schools — Lawrence Vidya Bhawan and Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Amira Kadal — till the late 2010s. The permeation of the conflict into daily civilian lives affected, at times, my access to education, as well as my critical thought. I moved to Delhi to obtain higher education. My research at University of Cambridge will examine literary and visual texts produced by Kashmiris, and try to engage with the politics of being evidenced in their making. Using the framing arc of the conflict, I will also make enquiries into how the dynamics of caste, class, religion, ethnicities, and sexual orientation brings forward varied Kashmiri subjectivities in complex dialogues of solidarity and differences, instead of a homogenous Kashmiri posited in narratives discourses.

Previous Education

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

Cancer remains a formidable challenge in healthcare with an urgent need to continuously improve diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. With a background in human biology and oncology, I am intrigued by how tumours and associated cells of the tumour microenvironment in aggressive solid malignancies learn to adapt and hijack normal physiological processes in hosts to support their maintenance and treatment resistance. Tumours undergo frequent metabolic alterations that support disease progression and are indicative of changing cellular states in response to pharmacological interventions. I am enthusiastic to further explore this topic with my PhD in Radiology at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with AstraZeneca, where I will have the opportunity to make use of novel, non-invasive hyperpolarised MRI imaging tools and advanced tissue analysis methods to probe changes in tumour metabolism in real time. With the aim of identifying targetable vulnerabilities and characterising drug-target interactions in cancer, I hope that our research brings us a step closer towards improving our understanding of classifying tumour heterogeneity, monitoring early response, and optimising treatment plans in the clinic.

Previous Education

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen MSc in Human Biology 2026
Amity University Kolkata BSc in Biotechnology 2022

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