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.
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.
Barry University Biology 2016
Barry University Chemistry 2016
I completed my PhD in Management Studies at the Judge Business School after completing my MPhil in innovation, strategy & organizational behavior. My research focused on the emergence of social impact investing in frontier African markets and how perceptions influence the flow of capital towards these markets. I hope to develop research which helps to improve access to capital for African firms and entrepreneurs. I also aspire to teach students about entrepreneurship and hope that my research would prove beneficial in educating a new class of investors about investment opportunities in Africa.
University of Cambridge MPhil in Innovation, Strategy and Organisation 2010
Penn State University BA
Harvard University
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.
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.
University of Cambridge
I completed my undergrad in Behavioral Neuroscience at Northeastern University and my Master’s as a Fulbright grantee in Cognitive Neuroscience at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. I am currently an MD/PhD student at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. During my academic journey, I have researched topics ranging from exercise’s effects on cognition to the neural mechanisms underlying social behaviors to quantifying inter-subject and inter-session fMRI variability. Inspired by the children I now help treat, I aim to build on my past research and clinical experiences by pursuing a PhD in Medical Science at Cambridge’s MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. There, I will investigate the relationship between electrophysiological findings, clinical phenotypes, and connectivity profiles underlying neurodevelopmental disorders linked to synaptic vesicle cycling genes. My goal is to become a physician-scientist who bridges international neuroscience research and pediatric care, translating research into therapies that improve the lives of children with neurodevelopmental disorders. I am honored and excited to work with my fellow Gates Cambridge scholars to create meaningful, global change in our respective fields.
Northeastern University Behavioral Neuroscience
Maastricht University Cognitive Neuroscience
UofA for Medical Sciences Medicine
I spent last year in Israel researching security, terrorism, and fear. Now, in my third year, I return to Cambridge to turn this fieldwork into a PhD thesis that examines the relationship between national security and private security.
2004-07 were excellent years in Cambridge, both socially and academically. After my MPhil and two years of PhD studies, I now look forward to one more year of Cambridge life and finalizing my PhD. My project aims to identify human genetic interactions relevant to cancer susceptibility.