Social Impact Award for Gates Cambridge Scholar

  • June 8, 2020
Social Impact Award for Gates Cambridge Scholar

Andrea Kusec has won a Social Impact Award from the University of Cambridge's Vice-Chancellor.

A Gates Cambridge Scholar has won an award from University of Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope for her efforts towards positive social change.

Andrea Kusec, President of the Gates Cambridge Scholars Council, won one of the Vice-Chancellor’s Social Impact Awards.

The awards recognise the achievement of outstanding students at the University of Cambridge, who demonstrate exceptional commitment to improving society and the wider world.

Andrea, who is doing a PhD in Medical Science, was recognised for her voluntary work at Addenbrooke’s helping people with brain injuries, for organising fundraising events for the Epilepsy Society UK and a silent auction and for being a consultant for a horticultural programme with Headway Cambridge.

Andrea said: “It is really humbling to be offered the Vice-Chancellor’s Social Impact Award and to be recognised alongside other inspiring students.

“I was surprised to be nominated and often feel that I get the most benefit out of my volunteering. I have epilepsy myself so the Purple Day fundraiser that I organised – where I was completely decked out in purple – was pretty personal to me.”

The awards are run in collaboration with Cambridge Hub, a student-led group that offers practical volunteering, skilled placements, project incubation and events.

Rather than an in-person ceremony, Andrea met with Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope virtually, alongside other award winners.

Latest News

Inclusive conservation

Rohini Chaturvedi finished her PhD at a difficult time for many students – in the midst of the global economic crisis of the early 2010s. But through a combination of hard work, initiative and serendipity she has found an impressive way to extend the work she did at Cambridge to promote conservation efforts in India. […]

Research impact award for Gates Cambridge Scholar

A Gates Cambridge Scholar is one of two winners of the 2023 Sandra Dawson Research Impact Award for his work on the economics of climate change earlier this month. The annual award was established through a generous donation from Professor Dame Sandra Dawson, a former Director of Cambridge’s Judge Business School. Winners are chosen based […]

AI system self-organises to resemble brains of complex organisms

A team of Cambridge scientists, co-led by a Gates Cambridge Scholar, have shown that placing physical constraints on an artificially-intelligent system – in much the same way that the human brain has to develop and operate within physical and biological constraints – allows it to develop features of the brains of complex organisms in order […]

Scholar wins history of science & medicine essay prize

A Gates Cambridge Scholar has won a prestigious essay competition about the history of early science with a treatise on evidence of knowledge exchange between the Ming-Chinese and Iberian conventions in the 16th century. The essay competition was run by the Early Sciences Forum of the History of Science Society and the Early Science and Medicine journal […]