Directory

Originally from a small town called Cohasset in the United States, I completed my BA from Harvard and my MPhil/PhD at Cambridge. My passion is technology and global health, and while at Cambridge I started a biometric tech company with a mission to make sure every vaccine, dollar, and public good reaches the people who need them most. My PhD research explored the application of management science to global poverty challenges, specifically how motivation & incentives drive high performance in front-line nonprofit workers. I hope to combine my passion for development with the rigor of scientific management to improve the delivery of social impact around the world.

Previous Education

Harvard University B.A. Biology/Anthropology 2010

I completed my BA in Biology, Neuroscience, and Children’s Studies at WashU in St. Louis, researching the effects of socioeconomic status on childhood brain development. As a former competitive athlete, I founded the region’s first Special Olympics program and became interested in the biological underpinnings of the neurodevelopmental disorders in the children I coached. As a Medical Science PhD candidate in the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge, I seek to understand the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying childhood disorders such as SYT1-related Baker-Gordon syndrome (with Dr. Baker herself). This work will occur in collaboration with Dr. Chris McBain at the NICHD through the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program. My long-term goal is to become a physician-scientist with a focus on pediatric neuroscience, seeking international dialogue and research collaboration in bettering the lives of children with neurodevelopmental challenges. With support from my fellow Gates Scholars, I hope to create a joint sports rehabilitation and music therapy program for special needs children in the Cambridge area. You will likely find me playing my guitar by the River Cam or trying out for the King’s football (soccer) team!

Previous Education

Washington University Neuroscience, Children's Study 2023

After completing my BA in mathematics at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, I came to Cambridge to study Part III maths. My academic interests lie chiefly in mathematical logic, but one of the opportunities studying at Cambridge offers is exposure to a wide array of mathematical ideas. The breadth of knowledge with which I hope to leave Cambridge should allow me to converse more fluently with mathematicians of all sorts, enhancing both my understanding and the understanding of my students and colleagues. After I leave Cambridge I intend to pursue a PhD in mathematics.

Since participating, age eleven, in an international summercamp in Japan, I have felt at home on the international plane. My legal studies in Utrecht and Cape Town and working experiences with international organisations (UN), NGOs (Plan Senegal), the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs and a law firm in Paris revealed my passion for international law. After obtaining an LLM at Utrecht University I read International Relations in Cambridge. Before I embarked on the PhD project, the call from the reality of the "world out there" was too strong. I worked for a year as legal and political advisor on the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan. After many months of fieldwork, generously supported by the Gates Cambridge Trust and the Arts & Humanities Research Council, I am finalising a PhD thesis called 'the catalysing effect in the line of fire' on Uganda's and Sudan's domestic legal responses to the ICC's investigations into Northern Uganda and Darfur respectively.

Links

http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/people/academic/smh-nouwen/40

Spending the first half of my life traveling from country to country including Dubai, Estonia, Mexico, Sweden, and Azerbaijan, among others, fostered a deep appreciation in me for the tremendous diversity of the world. However, in every place I noticed the ways in which narratives differed based on the perspective of the storyteller and how the national narrative depended on those with the most power. Studying Medical Anthropology, and Multidisciplinary Gender Studies in my BA and MPhil programs respectively, in addition to spending my last two years teaching Ethnic Studies to high school students in Stockton, CA, have been a part of my mission to elevate the status of marginalized narratives. As a PhD student in Education at Cambridge, I will focus on the role education has played in suppressing Black women’s narratives and how Black women have still thrived in academic spaces despite this challenge. As a Gates scholar I will use this knowledge to facilitate more inclusive learning environments and curricula.

Previous Education

Stanford University
University of Cambridge

I grew up in Nigeria and completed my undergraduate studies at Barry University in the United States. My research interests lie at the intersection of the physical and life sciences. I have worked on the synthesis of novel selective muscarinic agonists and explored the mechanisms of signaling bias in family A GPCRs. I also examined the effects of embryonic alcohol exposure in zebrafish. While working in the medical lab at the Nigerian Air Force Hospital, Abuja, I developed an interest in the therapeutic targeting of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. In developing countries, where antimicrobials are often indiscriminately prescribed and epidemiological surveillance is inadequate, the problem of multidrug-resistant infections is especially acute. At Cambridge, I will investigate the spatiotemporal evolution of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria, particularly those that cause gastrointestinal infections and are prevalent in low- and middle-income countries. The global and multidisciplinary learning network fostered by the Gates Cambridge Scholarship will enrich my graduate studies. I hope to learn from, contribute to, and be inspired by the diverse pool of talented Gates scholars and alumni from around the world.

Previous Education

Barry University Biology 2016
Barry University Chemistry 2016

I am a Research Fellow in the department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where I specialise in post-WWII Francophone philosophy and intellectual history.

I am also co-PI on the Digital Public Space Research Network: funded by Una Europa and the Polish Agency for Academic Exchange, this is a collaboration between UCM, The University of Edinburgh and KU Leuven.

Previously, I was a Research Fellow on the Spaces of Translation Project, jointly funded by the British (AHRC) and German National Research (DFG) Foundations. I have also been: a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for History of Ideas at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan; a Postdoctoral Affiliate at the University of Cambridge; and, a Lecteur at the ENS de Lyon.

Some Recent Work:

(1) An article on different conceptions of political community and democracy in 1980s French philosophy and its relation to the rise of the far-right: https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453722111490

(2) An article on the neglected Jewish philosopher, Sarah Kofman: https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2021.0351

(3) A book chapter on friendship in Montaigne, Kant and Levinas: https://doi.org/10.17613/3wm1-n260

(4) An article on Jacques Derrida's ideas of institutions and political engagements: https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2021.0264

My proposed PhD project involves examining high energy emission from the solar corona, in an effort to understand the questions associated with the nature of the processes that heat the solar corona to such high temperatures, maintain it at these temperatures and also accelerate the solar wind.  The project will involve use of data obtained from the Hinode satellite. My intention is to use my PhD training as a springboard for future research in the field. 

During my undergraduate degree in chemistry in University College Dublin, I had the opportunity to spend two consecutive summers in Switzerland in ETH Zurich and EPFL, doing research in theoretical and computational chemistry. These were very inspiring experiences, introducing me to a wonderful field that combines my love of chemistry, physics and mathematics. For me it is a very exciting field, and with constant advances in computational power and resources, we can make very high-quality predictions and learn about fundamental physical and chemical processes. During my PhD I will use supercomputers and machine learning to understand the salt dissolution process at a molecular level. This is important for example given that 2/3 of the Earth is covered in salty water, while sea salt aerosols are relevant to coastal erosion, cloud electrification and effect the tropospheric ozone balance. Moreover, models for climate change and cloud formation rely on a chemical and physical understanding of this process. I am very honoured and grateful to receive this scholarship, and I hope to make a positive contribution to the Gates Cambridge community and the field of theoretical chemistry while I am in Cambridge.

Previous Education

University College Dublin Chemistry 2020

Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, I decided to go overseas to Cambridge to study engineering for my undergraduate degree. Now in my fourth year, I intend to continue in the Engineering Department, working towards a PhD in statistical machine learning. I was first introduced to machine learning techniques in the context of wearable biomedical devices while working with Roozbeh Jafari at Texas A&M for a summer internship. While realizing the potential that wearable devices have for providing doctors and patients unprecedented access to physiological data, I was also struck by the sheer amount of data to be processed to uncover meaningful patterns and make predictions. Inspired to address these and similar issues in data modelling, I hope to develop novel techniques to improve upon both the speed and accuracy of current machine learning algorithms. Central to my work will be the idea that a probabilistic framework, one that can fully account for uncertainties in the data, provides the most flexibility and power in making inferences; this is a framework that Cambridge specialises in. My research will be applicable to all branches of science, but I am most eager to apply it to biomedical research. I am very honoured to join the Gates Cambridge community.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge