Dr Lengwe Sinkala

The first Gates Cambridge Scholar from Botswana, Lengwe will do a PhD in Engineering. A doctor with a passion for driving meaningful change in child healthcare, she will look at how paediatric surgical services can be redesigned to better support neurodivergent children.  

In 2018, Lengwe co-founded the Bupalo Children’s Centre in Zambia to support children with special needs, organising outreach programmes, advocating for inclusive therapies such as music therapy, and raising awareness of their unique needs.

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Ayọ̀bámi, from Nigeria, will do a PhD in Digital Humanities. She will study the intersections between literature, technology and culture, with a focus on how African literary magazines have facilitated networks of stylistic and thematic innovations among writers and editors. 

Ayọ̀bámi is a prize-winning Nigerian playwright and author. Her novel 'Stay with Me' won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and Prix Les Afriques and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and the Wellcome Book Prize. 'A Spell of Good Things' was longlisted for the Booker prize and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Encore Award. She has also served as a judge for both the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2024) and the Booker Prize (2025).

Viviana Gomez Ramirez

Viviana, from Colombia, will do a PhD in Physics. She aims to extend her current work on statistical mechanics, condensed matter and systems where disorder drives emergent behaviour to the world of quantum materials. She will study how disorder shapes the materials’ magnetic properties and collective behaviour.

Alongside her work in fundamental Physics, Viviana is seeking to use her knowledge of 2D-materials like graphene to improve the lives of her fellow Colombians. She is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of start-up Seebgen which provides graphene-based products such as ballistic protection plates to rural and vulnerable communities who have endured a long history of armed conflict.

Cong Minh Nguyen

From Vietnam, Cong Minh will do a PhD in Economics. As an economist, he wants to tell stories about how market systems shape people’s lives and how they can be redesigned to expand fairness and opportunity.

His PhD will focus on digital markets and will study how platforms’ information design may distort competition and facilitate algorithmic collusion among sellers’ automated pricing agents.

He says: “I want to use economics not simply to describe the world as it is, but to help build one in which information empowers rather than exploits.”

Jihad Hami

Jihad is a Kurdish researcher from Syria, who will do a PhD in Sociology. His academic work is shaped by his experiences as a Kurd, including his displacement due to the Syrian war.

His research focuses on nationalism, state violence, political belonging and alternative models of democracy beyond the confines of nation-states. Alongside his academic work, he has published articles on the Kurdish question and the political theory of the Kurdish movement. He has also co-edited, with Dr Thomas Jeffrey Miley, a book titled 'Rojava in Focus: Critical Dialogues'.