Directory

Kamiar Mohaddes is an expert in the macroeconomics of climate change and sustainability at Cambridge University, where he is the Co-Director of the climaTRACES Lab, a new interdisciplinary research initiative at the University of Cambridge focusing on climate, nature, and sustainability. He is also the Deputy Director of the Cambridge Executive MBA programme and Fellow in Economics at King’s College, Cambridge, where he co-founded and directs the King’s Entrepreneurship Lab.

In addition to climate change and sustainability, Kamiar's research covers energy economics, economics of the Middle East, and applied macroeconomics more broadly. He is among the top 1% authors globally in IDEAS/RePEc (based on last 10 years of publications). His articles have been published in a number of edited volumes (Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Routledge) as well as in leading journals, including the Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of International Economics, Management Science, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. His research has also been covered in major international news outlets including the BBC, Bloomberg, The Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Kamiar’s work has been cited extensively by policymakers, including by more than 25 members of the United States Congress, the Congressional Budget Office, and the White House.

Kamiar has worked extensively on issues related to climate change and sustainability with both the public (including the United Nations, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, IDB) and the private sector (BCG, BNP Paribas, KPMG and many others). He is a regular visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund and has previously served as a Departmental Special Advisor at the Bank of Canada. He has worked closely with colleagues at these institutions to, for instance, develop tools to help examine and disentangle the size and speed of the transmission of different global, regional, and national macroeconomic shocks.

Kamiar obtained his PhD in economics from Cambridge as a Gates Scholar.

Links

https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/people/kamiar-mohaddes
https://www.mohaddes.org
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamiarmohaddes

My proposed research deals with resource competition and inter-ethnic relations in south-central part of Ethiopia. It focuses on the link between the impact of ethnic relation on people’s access to natural resources on the one hand and how relations between various ethnic groups are influenced by individual’s decisions to secure access to such resources. The research is believed to contribute to the effort to understand the factors that shape relations among different ethnic groups.

I am pursuing a PhD in Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University, researching European nuclear & human rights frameworks. I am a policy analyst with a background in technology, development, and security policy for leading think tanks, government, and international organizations. I hold a Masters in International Policy from Stanford University and Bachelors in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. My experiences include collaborating with the United Nations Innovation Cell to monitor open-source information from the War in Ukraine, consulting with the United Nations Development Programme in South Africa to increase technology access for marginalized youth, supporting the U.S. Department of State on nuclear nonproliferation initiatives, and researching at Stanford University on human rights institutions in Southeast Asia. I am also an avid researcher and author, publishing with organizations like the Stimson Center, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Smithsonian Institution. I have represented my research at international conferences including at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Austria, Nehru Memorial Museum in India, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the U.S. Beyond my diverse policy interests, I co-founded a nonprofit that provided free career development and mental health mentorship virtually in over 35 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. I am especially passionate about promoting youth literacy and education, and have tutored immigrant youth in core subjects, organized textbook donations for low-income schools, and became certified in TEFL to teach English as a foreign language. In my personal time, I enjoy exploring the world around me and can be found reflecting in nature or listening to music. I also enjoy learning new languages, creating art, and spending time with my dog, Rishi. To connect with me, visit www.linkedin.com/in/justjanani or www.justjanani.com

Previous Education

Stanford University International Policy/Security 2022
Diplomatic Academy of Vienna Exchange Program from Stanford 2021
University of California, Berkeley Political Science 2019

I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Biochemistry and a BS in Economics. At Cambridge, I am pursuing an MPhil in Biochemistry. My research focuses on understanding polyketide antibiotic biosynthesis and its implications for less toxic antibiotics.

My main research interests are in neuropharmacology. For my PhD, I will be investigating the pharmacology of the blood brain barrier (BBB). This membranous barrier protects the brain from potentially harmful exogenous substances but also serves to impede advantageous drug delivery to the brain. I will use multidisciplinary approaches in my investigations of the BBB to provide further clarity on the pharmacological and biochemical mechanisms taking place in this region. Greater knowledge on the functioning of the BBB may have implications for drug delivery to the brain and in the pathology of certain CNS disorders. I believe my time spent at Cambridge will provide me with excellent training for my future career in medical research.

Energy infrastructure fascinates me. So much of society is built around and is dependent on our energy supply. Over the years, the way we access energy has repeatedly been revolutionised. Now, we are painfully aware that a complete revolution is again necessary. The energy sector of South Africa, my home country, is not only unsustainably dependent on coal but urgently requires expansion to meet rising demand. This gives us a fantastic opportunity to develop our energy sector in a sustainable direction. During my MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development at Cambridge I will study the options available to developing countries and how we can implement the necessary changes. I will focus on the decentralisation of energy supply and solar electric power production. The practical aspects of sustainable development that this course teaches will build on the technical knowledge that I have gained through my undergraduate degree in chemical engineering and my professional experience in a small Namibian energy company. It is an exciting and dynamic time that we are living in. I am honoured to be joining the Gates Cambridge community: an inter-disciplinary cohort that are working to make that change positive.

Previous Education

University of Cape Town

During my study in Melbourne, I took part in a project for resettlement of displaced rural communities in the Peruvian Andes. This experience reinforced an interest in post-conflict societies already developed through five years of active involvement with human rights NGOs in Stockholm. It also convinced me of the importance of researching transitional justice and the role of Truth Commissions in furthering dialogue and democracy. During my MPhil in Latin American Studies at Cambridge I looked at discursive narratives that emerged alongside the Peruvian Truth Commission’s report. In my PhD I will attempt to expand this and explore the way in which bystanders understand/represent the conflict that tormented Peru during the 1980s/90s and its aftermath. I plan to work with non-profit organisations in Sweden and Peru, contributing to the development of strategies that allow a constructive and successful dialogue between the communities of perpetrators, bystanders, and survivors.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge MPhil in Latin American Studies 2007
University of Melbourne BA Hons (History and Political Science) 2006

Born and raised in Saint Petersburg, Russia, I attended Saint Petersburg State University, where I have developed a strong interest in polar geophysical research. I continued my academic career at the University of Texas at Austin as a Fulbright scholar, where I applied marine geophysical techniques to study the history of past glaciations preserved within continental margins of Alaska and East Antarctica. I find studying complex interactions between ice, ocean, climate and tectonics on different temporal and spatial scales to be fascinating. More importantly, these studies hold the key to a better understanding of the long-term history of the global climate. At Cambridge, I hope to continue exploring polar regions in order to better understand the past of the cryosphere with implications for better projecting its future.

Previous Education

SAINT PETERSBURG STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

Montero was the first Mexican recipient of the Gates Scholarship for doctoral work in the humanities. Her current book project focuses on the hummingbird as an object of scholarly inquiry across an array of fields, including the history of science, archaeology, anthropology, art history and environmental history. She has taught previously at the Institute of Philosophical Research (UNAM) in Mexico City and currently teaches in the Science and Technology Studies Program at Brown University.

Links

http://http://brown.academia.edu/IrisMontero
https://vivo.brown.edu/display/imontero

Jonas has experience in global market access, pricing & reimbursement, health economics, health policy and commercial strategy, working with companies across the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries.

I am a South African citizen, and the Founder and Director of Hyperion Development. In 2015, I worked in the Search team at Google as an Associate Product Manager Intern, where I contributed to the development of Google Voice Search and the latest version of Android.I become a Gates Cambridge scholar in 2014, and hold a MPhil in Advanced Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, King's College. I completed my undergraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh in 2014, during which I was an exchange student at the University of Pennsylvania, and a summer research student at the University of Oxford.Hyperion Development (www.hyperiondev.com) runs the largest community of Computer Scientists and Software Developers in Africa, and delivers training in these fields to thousands of individuals internationally. In 2015, Hyperion partnered with Google and the Python Software Foundation to represent and improve Computer Science education and standards in South Africa.

Links

http://rmoola.com
http://hyperiondev.com

Born and raised in Pasadena, California, I completed a BA in Humanities at Yale University, where I developed a strong interest in religion, culture, and the arts, examining national monuments and memorials as sacred space for American civil religion. As an MDiv student at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, I took my interest in religion, culture, and the arts to Christian theology, where I used the discourse of theological aesthetics to re-conceptualize the doctrine of personhood in African American women’s experience. As an MPhil student in Theology and Religious Studies at Cambridge, I will further my focus on theological aesthetics by turning to music to examine how the phenomenon of beauty sheds light on justice in the doctrine of Creation. In this research, I will engage classical and feminist theology with insights from other fields where music and the language of beauty pervade, such as mathematics and evolutionary science. I seek to illuminate the integral relation of beauty to justice and the import of the aesthetic in comprehending the whole of life. As a candidate for ordination in the United Methodist Church, I understand this research to deepen our conception of ethics and to advance its concrete application. I am delighted and honored to join the Gates Cambridge community.

Previous Education

Yale University
Emory University

Andrea Morales Loucil is a cultural historian and literary scholar from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. She is a Gates-Cambridge Scholarship recipient pursuing a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies at King's College, University of Cambridge. Her dissertation examines the production of revolutionary poetics in the nineteenth-century Hispanophone Caribbean. Moreover, her work emphasises how revolutionaries of African descent in Cuba and Puerto Rico used literature to advocate for abolition, organise toward independence, and forge bonds of Afro-diasporic resistance. Andrea’s research broadens how Cuban and Puerto Rican conceptualisations of 'race' affect contemporary understandings of historical narratives, literary movements, and nation-building processes in the Caribbean and Latin America.

I am an archeologist interested in the arts and architecture of the cultures of Peru. It is through my personal experience as a classically trained artist that I became fascinated at how artifacts can express individual and cultural identity. The study of art and architecture of the past allows us the privilege to uncover information about forgotten peoples and cultures. This interest led me to pursue Bachelors degrees in both Art History and Anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles. My past research has pertained to the topics of agency, heritage, phenomenology, iconoclasm, ontology, gender, and materialization of ideology. My PhD research will serve to fill a lacuna in the knowledge of the Late Intermediate Period on the south coast of Peru and will shed light upon the shrouded origins of the Ica culture that lived in the region. This project will help to understand this understudied area of Peru and will ultimately serve as a collaborative project with the local population to preserve and display the artifacts in a local heritage museum.

Previous Education

University of California (Los Angeles)
University of Cambridge

I grew up in North Carolina and London, determined from a young age to disallow what I saw as unjust, particularly when it befell my childhood peers. This innate desire kindled in me a dedication to equitable education and mental health care. Earning my BA in psychology at Colgate University, with minors in education and creative writing, I seized opportunities to work directly with youth, an ardent believer in the importance of meeting children where they are and understanding their diverse needs as they learn to exert agency in response to the complexities of the ever-agitated world. I conducted research in the US, UK, Ghana, Samoa, and among several refugee communities, driven by increasing rates of mental illness and decreasing age of onset — both exacerbated by the global pandemic. After graduation, I joined the Center for Autism Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. My PhD, a coalescence of my experiences, will focus on effectively supporting youth at the community level and within contexts of demographics, neurodiversity, and personal/political disruption. Understanding which interventions are beneficial long-term for children with internalising difficulties will enable individualised optimisation of care.

Previous Education

Colgate University Psychology 2021