Directory

Previous Education

Harvard University

As an undergraduate Biomedical Engineering student at the University of Delaware, I developed a strong interest in biomedical technologies through a combination of research experiences and self-started software development projects. I have always had a passion for computer related technologies, and am looking for ways in which to apply this knowledge towards expanding the capabilities of modern healthcare. As a future medical student, studying Bioscience Enterprise at Cambridge will allow me to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges that must be overcome to bring modern research advances into healthcare practice. I am proud to be joining the global Gates Cambridge community, and am looking forward to working with other talented scholars to improve the lives of individuals across the planet.

Previous Education

University of Delaware

A tragic personal event informed my interest in medicine from the tender age of six. My choice of the University of Maiduguri in North East of Nigeria for my undergraduate medical education was a deliberate attempt to gain exposure to some of the most underserved populations in the region, a situation which the Boko Haram violence has worsened. It is noteworthy that Nigeria contributes 19% of global under-five deaths despite accounting for only 2.4% of the world’s population. This experience fuelled my interest in poor, rural underserved populations and informed my decision to specialise in paediatrics. Paediatricians are well-positioned to identify public health issues that adversely affect well-being and are committed to the prevention and early identification of diseases and injuries. This integration of clinical medicine with public health principles is key to attaining genuinely population-oriented multi-level disease prevention. My research interest is in infectious diseases, particularly pediatric lung infections and how these affect the life course, and access to safe and quality healthcare. I am utterly grateful for the opportunity to expand my area of influence beyond the walls of a hospital or clinic.

Previous Education

Ahmadu Bello University Disaster Risk Mgt & Devt Study 2022
University of Maiduguri Medicine and Surgery 2015

Born in California, raised in Florida, I have an undergraduate degree in history and literature from FSU. I was awarded an MA from the University of York (UK), where I studied on a Rotary Scholarship for a dissertation treating the history of counter-revolutionary thought in France. At Cambridge I wrote an MPhil thesis treating the novels and political thought of the French writer Maurice Barres. I recently completed my PhD in French History at Queen Mary, University of London. I live with my wife in York, England.

I bought my first chant album in the sixth grade as a first-year Latin student. While an undergraduate, my childhood fascination with chant blossomed into an intellectual passion, which now, in turn, has led to the pursuit of a Ph.D. in Music. I am particularly excited about pursuing my interests in chant at Cambridge University because Cambridge is unique in its resources for the interdisciplinary study of chant and its medieval contexts.

Previous Education

University of Pennsylvania MA, MS, PhD Music/Education 2005
Villanova University MA Classical Studies 2005
College of the Holy Cross BA Music 1998

I was drawn into the curious and complex world of immunology during my Honours degree in the Horsnell group at the University of Cape Town, where I studied lung pathology in the acute immune response to helminth infections. This, against my background as a clinician and further education in public health, has led my professional interests towards the intersection of these three areas: fundamental science, clinical medicine and population health. By identifying important health concerns and addressing them across scales, I hope to improve global health outcomes through my career in a cost-effective and context-relevant manner which prioritises reaching under-served people. In partnership with global leaders in the field, my PhD aims to develop and test a novel vaccine platform to generate broadly-protective vaccines against Betacoronaviruses. The idea underlying this work is ‘pandemic preparedness’ – aiming to ensure the next human viral pandemic is comparatively minor by pre-emptively improving the breadth and efficacy of available vaccines. I am privileged to be joining the Gates Cambridge community, and am very grateful to the Trust for this wonderful opportunity.

Previous Education

University of Cape Town Public Health (Epi & Biostats) 2022
University of Cape Town Medicine 2017
University of Cape Town Infectious Disease, Immunology 2014

As an undergraduate at Northwestern University, I studied Earth sciences to better understand the fundamental processes underpinning the natural environment and how modern society has pushed those processes to the brink of collapse. I learned that one of the greatest sources of unsustainable natural resource consumption is modern agriculture. This was an auspicious realization, as the study of agriculture overlaps with many interesting disciplines from nutrition to environmental sustainability to biotechnology. I therefore decided to study agricultural sciences as a masters student at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I researched how light quality influences plant growth and resilience to stress. As a natural progression, I then moved into commercial greenhouse hydroponics where I worked to optimize environmental conditions most suitable for crop growth. I then returned to more academic pursuits at the Carnegie Institution for Science, where I continued to investigate how plants respond to environmental stress. At Cambridge, I will explore how plants anticipate and adapt to environmental fluctuations. Insights gained from this research will support continued efforts to breed more efficient, productive, and sustainable crops.

Previous Education

Hebrew University of Jerusalem Agricultural Sciences 2018
Northwestern University Earth & Planetary Sciences 2013

After undergraduate work at North Carolina State University in Biomedical Engineering, the Gates-Cambridge Scholarship allowed me to perform magnetic resonance imaging research towards an M.Phil. in the Herchel Smith Laboratory for Medicinal Chemistry. Afterwards, I returned to the US to attend Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. I graduated in 2009 and have remained at Hopkins as a general surgery resident.

Links

https://files.nyu.edu/dlg325/public

(Update: I am now CEO of PetaGene. We tackle challenges in Personalised Medicine, making unwieldy genomic data from sequencers smaller, better and faster, to reduce costs, improve analysis and speed up collaboration.) My PhD research developed models for the physical locality of networks. Locality is fundamentally important for the performance of future computer systems with thousands of processors on a chip, but not much is fundamentally known about it. What is very exciting is that in collaborations with the Brain Mapping Institute, we've also found the theory can explain some mysteries of mammalian neuronal networks and we believe it may help to explain other natural phenomena where physical position matters such as social, epidemic, financial, and traffic networks.

Through a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Philosophy at the University of Sydney I have pursued an eclectic range of topics in Classical Studies, spanning theatrical politics to ancient literary criticism. My MPhil thesis investigated the etymologies of divine names and epithets in Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus with a specific focus on the way in which these literary exercises promulgate a mode of apophatic theology within the apologetic context. Inspired by Clement’s tactical depiction of himself as a truth-seeking traveller, my PhD will shift focus to the surviving corpus of ancient travel writing – specifically, it will constitute the first comprehensive study of the body of texts known as Periploi (“Circumnavigations”). In the most rudimentary sense, the Periploi are a species of nautical guidebooks ostensibly designed to operate as navigational schematics for ancient sailors. On close inspection, however, it becomes clear that these texts communicate far more than sparse literary geographies of ancient coastlines. Rather, they varyingly comprise ethnographic records of coastal communities, philosophical attempts to capture in words the scope of the known world, geopolitical dossiers written at the behest of emperors, and more. With the aid of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, my thesis will analyse this multitude of functions with a view to understanding the way in which the Periplous text-type responded and adapted to distinct contexts over time.

Previous Education

University of Sydney Ancient History 2019
University of Sydney Ancient History 2017

My passion for building bridges combines my academic interests in structural engineering with my love of water and the hope I find in our human ability to overcome physical barriers to build integrated communities. After my bachelors in Civil Engineering, I started a social enterprise producing ISSB bricks in Zambia following my work in MIT’s International Development Lab. After returning for a Master in Structural Engineering, I worked with NGOs in Bolivia and the Philippines where engineering solutions targeting neglected poor communities could alleviate poverty and reduce casualties from natural disasters. After working for an engineering firm in Washington DC, I returned to the Philippines on a Fulbright scholarship to improve indigenous housing to withstand typhoons. My course at Cambridge University will build on my international engineering experiences to support my mission of bridging the gap between engineering solutions and the people who need them most around the world.

Previous Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Masters Structural Engineering 2010
Massachusetts Institute of Technology BSc Civil Engineering 2006

I am a professional biophysicist working in the San Diego biotech sector. After graduating from Caltech in 2006, I attended the University of Cambridge for a year as a Gates Scholar (Churchill College) where I studied x-ray crystallography in the laboratory of Prof. Ben Luisi. I later completed my doctoral work at Stanford in the laboratory of Prof. Steven Block. I am now working as a scientist at NAT Diagnostics, a startup focused on developing new point-of-care technologies for rapid detection of infectious disease.

I am now a Principal Scientist in Computational Biology at Boehringer Ingelheim, focussing on metabolic disease.

I was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, and moved to North Carolina, USA in 2007. In high school I studied cello at UNC School of the Arts and took up an interest in biostatistics once I began my undergraduate studies at UNC Chapel Hill. During my studies I had the opportunity to work on various research projects in the fields of neuroscience, origins of life, and tumor biology, which solidified my aspiration to pursue a research career in biology. As a PhD student at the Sanger Institute, I will study the impact that genetic variation has on health in understudied populations. I believe that it is the responsibility of the medical genetics research community to expand research to understudied populations, and I look forward to contributing to this effort during my time at Cambridge.

Previous Education

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Biostatistics and Mathematics 2020