Directory

As an undergraduate researcher in the Butler Polymer Research Laboratory at the University of Florida, I developed an interest in bridging the gap between polymer chemistry innovations and biomedical applications. During my PhD in Chemistry, I intend to tackle biomedical problems from a molecular-level approach and to design stimuli-responsive materials with potential for the controlled and long-term encapsulation and release of insulin to treat type 1 diabetes. As a type 1 diabetic myself, I feel incredibly fortunate to have grown up in a country where live-saving technologies allow me to thrive. I am heartbroken by the reality that many people in under-resourced regions lack access to affordable and accessible medical care to treat chronic conditions like type 1 diabetes. I am dedicated to both the pursuit of innovations in therapeutics through polymer chemistry and the expansion of access to these innovations for those in need. I am incredibly honored to join the Gates community and to work to make a lasting impact on the medical field for individuals from all backgrounds.

Previous Education

University of Florida Chemistry 2024

I came to Cambridge following on from working for two of Australia’s highest institutions of government: the High Court of Australia and the Upper House of Australia’s Federal Parliament (the Senate). The experience I gained in both positions fed into my longstanding interest in how governments, the legal system, and advocates in general could better serve those who fall between society’s gaps in opportunities and representation. That is an interest I am now pursuing in an academic context at Cambridge through my studies in jurisprudence, civil liberties and human rights as part of the Master of Law (LLM) program. At the end of the academic year I plan to return to Australia and pursue a career as a barrister and in law reform.

During my Nanotechnology Engineering degree at the University of Waterloo, I have come to understand the importance of interdisciplinarity. Being taught everything from biochemistry to controls systems, my research background has been broad from photonic metasurfaces and plasmonic biosensors at Harvard to Bose-Einstein condensates at Cambridge, to muon physics at the Paul Scherrer Institute, and program management at Microsoft Japan doing coding work in machine learning. I will be pursuing a PhD in High Energy Physics at the ATLAS collaboration at Cambridge in the hopes of advancing our understanding of the universe beyond the standard model. My hope is that with a new breakthrough we will be able to stem a new blossoming of world-changing technology just like when Planck made his breakthrough 100 years ago. I am incredibly honoured to join the Gates Cambridge community, and as an interdisciplinary at heart, I am excited for the opportunities this community will give to stem new collaborations. Interdisciplinary collaborations with particle physics have yielded incredibly impactful results, from proton therapy for cancer treatment, to cosmic muon tomography for understanding how the Pyramids were built and the effects of global warming with respect to glacier melting. I also seek to address current issues in STEM outreach, such that we may ensure that every child can pursue their passion in spite of their cultural pressures.

Previous Education

University of Waterloo Nanotechnology Engineering 2019
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Exchange 2017

Prior to Cambridge I taught history at a private school in Vermont, studied in India, worked in public policy, and volunteered on an archaeology project in the Caribbean. I am in the final year of my PhD in Social Anthropology. I did my fieldwork in the USA in an Arab-American Christian community. Religious identity, social memory, and perceptions of the past are some of the issues I focus on in my work. My goal is to pursue a career in academia after completing my PhD.

My initial interest in Neuroscience emerged during my undergraduate studies at Northeastern University. However, it was my experience working as a PT/OT aide with survivors of stroke and traumatic brain injury (TBI) that sparked a profound passion for working in neurorehabilitation. In this setting, I often observed that patients were not given clear prognostic outcomes. This realization served as a catalyst, pivoting my research interests towards the characterization of central nervous system conditions and utilizing precision medicine to improve therapeutic interventions. With over six years of research experience spanning both industry and academia, I’ve investigated neurodegenerative disorders, spinal cord injuries, and amputations using several modalities including MRI, EEG, and interventional neuromodulatory methods. Working directly with various populations and methodologies has deeply enriched my dedication to helping others through research. As I begin my journey towards a PhD in Medicine at Cambridge, my hope is to use novel biomarkers to improve prognostic models of TBI and to narrow the research-to-practice gap in neurorehabilitation.

Previous Education

Northeastern University Post-Baccalaureate Coursework 2021
Northeastern University Psychology 2019

Ria Roy is a historian of modern East Asia interested in the reception of Western political ideas in East Asia and the revolutionary bloc.

https://www.hoover.org/profiles/ria-roy

Previous Education

Waseda University
Harvard University

My undergraduate studies in opera performance led me to Jordan, where I served as a Fulbright fellow researching music education for young Syrians. I went on to live in the region for another five years, primarily working as an education consultant to humanitarian aid organizations. While this experience solidified my interest in education, it also raised difficult questions about the potential for aid efforts to harm those they aim to help.My doctoral research on the geopolitics of higher education in Syria was born out of these experiences and concerns. The project examines how foreign actors within the conflict—western aid donors among them—have come to shape universities throughout the country. It is my hope that research of this kind might inform more just practices of solidarity and support for Syrian academic communities.

For the past four years I have raised critical funds for WaterAid, a non-profit dedicated to universal access to clean water. However, my interest in the water sector began during my MSc at University College London, conducting research in the Colombian Amazon on the efficacy of water access indicators used to measure Millennium Development Goal progress. For my PhD in Geography at Cambridge, I will continue to focus on household water issues, exploring the impact of extreme water scarcity in northern Colombia by privileging the epistemic standpoint of indigenous women in the region. Very little is known about women’s specific household water needs and how, often highly contested access is negotiated amid competing internal and external processes. As climate change exacerbates water insecurity and competition for resources becomes increasingly fraught, representative data that informs effective, resilient and equitable water policies is urgently needed. Insisting that gender counts has long been a core project of feminist researchers. I seek to continue these efforts, closing the gender data gap and ensuring women’s lives are visible in the literature and at the forefront of policy decision-making in the water sector and beyond.

Previous Education

University College London Anth, Environment, Development 2014
College of William and Mary Anth & Environmental Science 2012

As the daughter of two globetrotting agricultural economists, I've always been fascinated by why people eat what they eat. My obsession with what's for dinner led me to work in the basements of some of New York City's finest restaurants, to test recipes in the kitchens of renowned cookbook authors, and to sift through the archives of the man who invented the chicken nugget. As a National Geographic Explorer and avid scuba diver, I also care deeply about the natural world and the impact humans are having on the health of our oceans. My PhD research at the University of Cambridge will combine these two interests to focus on how past fish stock collapses have impacted national eating habits. It is my hope that this work will provide a new mode of understanding the social effects of these environmental and economic catastrophes. A graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Social Studies and a current Cambridge MPhil student studying Economic and Social History, I am also the author of "Tastes Like Chicken: a History of America's Favorite Bird" and the founding editor of Eaten: the Food History Magazine.

Previous Education

Harvard University
University of Cambridge

My research project concerns the legitimacy and sovereignty of states and non-state actors in "tribal" societies, particularly in South Arabia. More specifically, the project investigates the relationships between tribes, religious elites and the state, especially where these relationships were altered by large-scale interventions from outside actors and ideologies, or by the discovery of natural resources. I believe that proper understanding of these relationships will have a bearing on the development of location-specific approaches to a variety of societies and contribute to a fairer distribution of humanitarian aid and development funds. I am also interested in the research of desertification, revival of grasslands through improved livestock management practices, access to land for small-scale farmers and the dynamics of rural life. These issues are relevant across the globe and directly affect public health; yet not enough is currently being done to reverse desertification, improve the condition of our grasslands and return farming families into the countryside.I am thankful for the opportunity to join the Gates Cambridge community of scholars. I appreciate the Trust’s mission and very much look forward to the beginning of the academic year.

Previous Education

Middlebury College
University of Cambridge

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and graduated in 2014 from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in History and Economics. I began my undergraduate studies intending to study macroeconomic theory in preparation for a career in economic development. However, I soon realized that I was more interested in using the economic history of developed countries as a source of policy lessons for the developing world today. As such, I studied for an M.Phil in Economic and Social History at Sidney Sussex, and wrote my thesis on the occupational structure of the region of England at the center of the industrial revolution between 1600 and 1850. I now am working as an Associate in the Chicago office of the Boston Consulting Group on a variety of interesting projects.

I became passionate about biological systems and epigenetic regulation while I was studying my B.Sc. in Biotechnology Engineering at Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey – Campus Estado de Mexico, but also intricated with the complexities of these systems. I am convinced that they hold the key for treating diseases with clinical unmet needs, as such during my undergraduate program I conducted research related with RNA biology and gene silencing. During my PhD in genetics at Cambridge I will work on conducting research on RNA epigenetics and posttranscriptional gene regulation, as I strongly believe that these areas of research will allow us to gain a better understanding of the functioning of biological systems and to search for potential treatments for diseases, such as Cancer. I am very proud and excited to be a part of the Gates Cambridge Community, a community of scholars who believe in the power of knowledge for transforming societies.

Previous Education

Inst Tecnológico de Monterrey Estado de Mexico Biotechnology Engineering 2020

I have always been interested in how government works and its potential for solving issues. As a public policy student at CIDE, a Mexican public social sciences think-tank, I delved into Mexican social policy and its conceptual underpinnings. Simultaneously, as a research assistant, I collaborated in research concerned with penitentiary and drug policy reform. After graduation, I became a lobbyist, gaining front row experience in Mexican politics. Despite working on different policy areas, including energy and fiscal policy, I felt I contributed the most by pushing for cannabis reform in partnership with activists, progressive politicians, and medical patients. Having completed my MPhil at Cambridge and worked as a policy analyst for the 2024 presidential pre-campaign of Marcelo Ebrard, former Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs, as a PhD student I intend to explore the complex relationship between international law and public policy by studying if international human rights treaties prompted a cascade in social policy reform across Latin America. I am excited in becoming a member of the Gates Cambridge Community, and in the future, I intend to place a better understanding of policy determinants at the heart of government.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Politics and International Stu 2022
CIDE Public Policy 2019

Camilo Ruiz is a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology majoring in Biological Engineering. He has conducted extensive research focusing on translational and high-impact work. Working on a team at the DNA Medicine Institute, Camilo helped to develop a blood diagnostic device capable of shrinking a room’s worth of hospital equipment into a patient’s hand. The device won the $500K Nokia Sensing XChallenge competition and is a finalist for the $10M XPrize. Working on a team at MIT’s Langer Lab, Camilo helped to develop the CellSQZ, a microfluidic device to deliver macromolecules to many cell types. In 2014, the device was named a “Top 10 World Changing Idea” by Scientific American. Overall, Camilo has two main goals. First, he hopes to develop cutting-edge tools that make bioengineering cheaper, faster, and more accessible. Second, he hopes to invent biotechnologies that solve critical problems in health and energy. Through the Gates Cambridge Fellowship, Camilo will pursue an M.Phil. in Biological Science. By developing a strong foundation in machine learning and other computational techniques, he hopes to model, design, and construct biological systems more effectively.

Previous Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professional interests: developing a chemical-scale understanding of how form influences function in complex biological macromolecules; molecular recognition of and by RNA. Non-academic interests: Russian language, dance, Georgian cuisine