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I am focusing my research on major European literary competitions such as the Prix Goncourt, Premio Planeta or Premio Viareggio. I am particularly interested in considering issues of cultural identity and hope to investigate the nature and functioning of the link existing between literary creation, identity constitution and the establishment of aesthetic judgement.

I am very grateful to the Gates Cambridge Trust for their generous financial support of my PhD in Intellectual History. My research centres on eighteenth century debates concerning the sociability of mankind – with a particular focus on questions regarding the foundations of morality and conjectural accounts describing the earliest stages of human development. My intention is to reconstruct this discourse of sociability as a means of reevaluating the philosophical contributions generated by some of the most exciting minds of the Enlightenment. In particular, I will focus on Adam Smith's contribution to these debates by exploring his reading of various 'new systems' of jurisprudence that were devised by continental scholars.

I'm doing a PhD in pure mathematics at the DPMMS, Cambridge. My research field is algebraic geometry, a subject which deals with higher dimensional spaces defined by polynomial equations. Aside from my studies, I'm on the basketball team and enjoy playing my acoustic guitar.

While completing my MPhil in Musicology at Cambridge--during which I completed a dissertation on film music--I unearthed an interest in studying geography. After a couple of years working in university administration and joining the Teach for America program, I completed a PhD in Geography at UC Berkeley, where I studied the history of urban development and city planning. Since graduating in 2016, I have taught global studies, politics, and history at two high schools and spent three years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a Geospatial Analyst and Project Manger. I now work for Esri, the world's leading GIS company, as the Global Health Portfolio Lead. In this role, I help health organizations large and small harness the power of geospatial technology to solve the world's most pressing public health challenges.

Previous Education

University of Arkansas BA Music 2006

I worked as a Teaching Assistant at the KNUST Computer Science Department where I organized tutorial sessions for undergraduate courses in C++ and Pascal Programming. Prior to this, I served as Teaching Assistant at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT. During my course, I held several positions including president of a Christian organization. I organized an outreach programme to a village, where we educated the village on health and social issues, distributed aid to the poor and preached the Gospel. I also co-founded the KNUST Linux Club, a thriving organization where free Linux classes are offered to students. My curiosity about Speech Recognition Systems started when I first tried to use Microsoft Word Speech Recognition System. I resolved to study their underlying theories in order to conduct independent research in this field because of its relevance to the growing IT world. After the MPhil, I hope to pursue a PhD in Cambridge and return to Ghana.

Previous Education

Washington University in St. Louis

I grew up in Kolkata, India and studied for a BA in English at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University. Later, I pursued an MA in Comparative Literature at SOAS, University of London. As a student of literature, I grew deeply interested in the subversive potential and the community value of protest poetry. Through my PhD in English at Cambridge, I seek to explore the literary and cultural movements of the protest poem in the postcolonial metropolis. I find this examination increasingly relevant in light of recent worldwide resistance networks, which express international solidarity through the literary text. Through this project, I hope to not only find interventional ways of thinking about the protest poem, but also to find methodologies for making the literature classroom a socially transformative space.(she/her)

Previous Education

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) MA in Comparative Literature (Africa/Asia) 2019
Lady Shri Ram College for Women BA in English 2018

Most of the people have no choice about being poor, this decision comes with the cradle. Due to my life experience I consider that it is my duty to work for them, so that they can have the same opportunities in life, independently of the birth conditions. I am an economist and an industrial engineer. With them I have been able to work in diverse projects (in the health area) that promote this equality. Yet, each time I found more differences between the assumptions in which economic theory is made and the developing world. In my MPhill I worked to understand better the statistical tools so that now, in the PhD, I can build theory, based on network models, to understand how the development of a region cannot be studied alone, but it should be embedded within its geographical context. In this way, with my study, I want to help in the construction of better public policies.

Previous Education

St Stephen's College, University of Delhi B.Sc. (Honours) Physics 2002

Links

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/arijeet-pal-220723a9

I am a first generation Chinese-American MD/PhD student interested in studying disease at the bench-side and bed-side. While I concentrated in Economics at Harvard, I also explored other disciplines, including Medicine and research. My previous research experiences include developing targeted immunotherapies at the National Institutes of Health and understanding hyperleptinemia in obesity at the University of Michigan during my PhD in the Myers Lab. Interestingly, in the wards, I have witnessed the clinical significance of both leukemia treated with immunotherapy and obesity-related complications. In the O’Rahilly Lab at the University of Cambridge, I will extend my research in obesity and learn how to translationally apply basic science findings at the bench-side to patient care at the bed-side. Additionally, through the Gates community, I hope to further develop my understanding of using multi-disciplinary approaches to address multifaceted diseases like obesity. I, therefore, aim to become a physician-scientist who asks and answers questions grounded in clinical Medicine that can be translationally applied to patients.

Previous Education

National Institutes of Health
University of Michigan

I am a serial entrepreneur, having founded a few companies both in the UK and in China, mainly in the education and investment sectors.

In the Gates community, I assumed Committee Member of the inaugural Gates Cambridge Biennial as well as Committee Member of the 25@25 Provost Advisory Group.

Links

http://www.arkim.co.uk
https://www.linkedin.com/in/xiaohan-pan-phd-cfa-673957b

My principal academic interests concern the relations between metaphysics, philosophy of language and ethics in western and Indian philosophy. My PhD thesis focuses on the Nietzschean and Buddhist notions of 'great-health'. I begin with the genesis of Nietzsche's ideas in and through his encounter with Indian Buddhism and then turn to some of the fundamental psychological and moral issues which he brings up. What, I ask, may remain of ethics after the myth of transcendence is debunked?

Having always been fascinated by the history of science and how scientific descriptions can be quite counter-intuitive, I decided to major in Physics. However, I soon realised that the issues I was interested in were being asked instead in the Humanities and Social Sciences instead. As a result, I shifted focus to the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS). As a Master's student at Cambridge HPS, I studied various colonial-era surveyors in Scotland and British India. Drawing on the history of colonialism, the sociology of science, and cartography, I studied the range of of methods deployed to secure credibility by agents far away from metropolitan centres. I currently work as Research Associate in Singapore, where I use the tools and approaches learnt at Cambridge to study the growth of genomics and state surveillance in South and South East Asia.

Growing up in Israel, my academic aspiration has always been driven by a search for a path that could lead to a feasible and concrete change within the Israeli society. I was drawn to the academia after years of experience in journalism, politics and NGOs. Before joining the Gates community, I have worked for ‘Haaretz’ newspaper, the Israeli Parliament and the aid organisation for refugees in Israel. Today I am a PhD candidate at the Sociology department at Cambridge and a research associate at ‘Molad – The Centre for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy’. Following my bachelor’s degree in The Hebrew University’s honours programme, I have graduated my master’s degree at Political Communications from Goldsmiths, University of London. My current project explores the ever-changing relationship between media and politics in contemporary democracies, and in particular, the encounter between mainstream media and political extremism in the age of social media and big data. Due to dramatic cultural shifts, both on the local and international levels, a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind populism, extremism and social polarisation is essential. I find it imperative for academics to contribute to the debate, providing insightful ideas and practical tools for journalists, politicians and citizens. Coming from Israel, where the media, the civil society and democracy itself are increasingly under threat, I perceive this task as both intellectually and politically urgent.

Previous Education

Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Goldsmiths College (University of London)

Previous Education

University of Cambridge B.A. Hons 2002

After finishing with a Bsc in Mathematics from Imperial College London, I came to Cambridge to pursue further studies on Mathematics and especially Statistics. Thus, I first completed the MAST in Pure Mathematics where though I solely selected Statistics modules and I am now continuing with a PhD in Biostatistics. The project I will focus on deals with the assessment of the impact of learning curves, multiple operators and non-proportion hazards in clinical trials of surgical procedures and devices. Possible career paths I am considering after the PhD are doing research for my country’s ministry of health or for the first medical school that is about to open in Cyprus.

My research is highly multidisciplinary and uses ideas from mathematics and control engineering to obtain a sharper and more rigorous understanding of biological processes. In particular, I have applied stochastic, information, queueing, estimation and control theory to uncover new insights into molecular biology, epidemiology and invertebrate neuroscience. My current work looks at developing new models for epidemic transmission and control, which favourable trade complexity with reliability.

My studies will focus on promoting economic growth and improving health care systems in developing countries. I view the need to provide opportunity by removing the crippling effects of poverty and health as an urgent obligation of society. After my studies at Cambridge, I will return to the University of Miami to complete my degree in medicine. I hope that this academic combination will allow me to fulfill my aspirations as a future leader in international health and development policy.