Directory

I am currently a PhD Candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and a 2020 Gates Scholar. My research examines how technology is impacting historic forms of state and corporate power. I also host a weekly podcast The Anti-Dystopians, the politics podcast about tech.
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I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I received my BA from Stanford University in History and the Law with a minor in Human Rights and honors in Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. I received my MA in Conflict Transformation and Social Justice from Queen’s University Belfast as a 2017 Marshall Scholar, where my master’s research examined how new technologies were impacting policing and the nature of state control in Northern Ireland. My undergraduate honors thesis focused on the impact of transitional justice on communities transitioning out of conflict, specifically in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I have worked at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice and the Stanford Global Studies Division at Stanford University, the BrexitNI Law Clinic in Northern Ireland, the Asian International Justice Initiative in Phnom Penh, the Balkan Institute for Conflict Resolution, Responsibility and Reconciliation in Sarajevo and the US State Department in Washington D.C.

Previous Education

Queen's University Belfast Conflict Transformation 2018
Stanford University History 2017

Links

http://www.alinautrata.com

Growing up in Bejuma, Venezuela, I witnessed how the unreliable energy system of the country threatened food supply, health care facilities, public transportation, and access to clean water. These factors contribute to widespread poverty, rising death tolls, and a mass displacement of refugees in countries that experience similar crises. After obtaining a BSc in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Colorado State University, I developed a fascination for the beauty of chemical processes and their power to deliver uncompromised and sustainable energy access. This is important because I believe every person deserves safe and renewable energy to enjoy a high quality of life. During my Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, I will investigate liquid hydrogen production and commercialization as an alternative to decarbonize the aviation sector and manage climate change. The process will be challenging and intriguing because of the difficulties of handling and storing hydrogen within aviation constraints, minimizing boil-off, and addressing the safety of hydrogen in the liquid state. This research will address energy scarcity, climate refugees, and ultimately improve the lives of people in the most vulnerable regions of the world.

Previous Education

Colorado State University Chemical and Biological Eng 2021

This past year has certainly been a life altering and exciting one! It began by ushering in 2010 while paddling a dugout canoe in remote Sulawesi, undertaking a self-founded Australian Geographic sponsored expedition to raise awareness about living sustainably with fragile environments. After recovering from dengue fever it was off to South America to cycle through Patagonia and explore as much of the continent as possible, partially offsetting the costs by freelancing for Australian Geographic Outdoor magazine. However one of my most significant events of the year has been the generosity afforded to me by the Gates Cambridge Trust. The scholarship they have awarded me is now allowing me to do what I dreamed of: to study a PhD examining cooperative hunting and cognition at Cambridge. This is an immense privilege, and I plan to use what I learn to help positively influence public attitudes towards our world's imperiled natural environment.

Born in Colombia but raised in Panama, I grew up playing with Legos. I rendered my thoughts in the form of colored bricks, building until my fingertips hurt from pushing pieces together. This passion for building translated into a love for science, which resulted in a Bachelor’s degree in Optical Engineering at the University of Rochester. During my studies I explored the ray, wave, and quantum natures of light and I fell in love with its inherent duality. There’s no absolute definition to light’s character, it depends on the context in which it interacts with its surroundings. Science and technology inspire me, and management and entrepreneurship are my driving passions. I truly enjoy working with people, especially to push forward new technologies to improve our society’s living standards. At Cambridge I will work with Professor Clemens Kaminski’s group to pioneer new trade-offs between optical and digital complexity in super resolution microscopy to better understand chemical reactions in the human body at a nanometer scale. This could allow scientists to better understand protein aggregation in the brain for early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In the long term I want to become involved in international public policy on technological innovation and energy awareness; I want to bridge the gap between technical knowledge, management decisions, and policy making in the optics and photonics industry.

Previous Education

University of Rochester

Previous Education

University of Cambridge MPhil Enviroment & Development 2000
Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador B.Sc Biology 1995

I am doing a PhD in Polar Studies with a focus on the religious conversion of Arctic reindeer-herders in Russia. While in Cambridge, I hope to develop my expertise in social anthropology for contributing to the development of the discipline at home. In the long term perspective, I intend to work for the benefit of the northern indigenous communities by raising, through my research, such issues as human rights and sustainable development in the circumpolar areas.

Growing up in the Netherlands, I was always way too curious, asking too many questions to understand the ‘’How’’ and ‘’Why’’ (I had my own little blue microscope when I was 8, telling my family about the bacteria in water). This curiosity only grew stronger during my BSc Biomedical Sciences at Utrecht University, which I combined with a BSc interdisciplinary honours program. At the same time, driven by my values - the right to healthcare, equality, peace and safe and health environment for everyone - I developed a strong passion for Global Health and Climate Change action and dedicated my time to work for international non-profit organisations including: IFMSA, focussing on the improvement of Global Health operating in 127 countries; UAEM; UNFCCC-YOUNGO and other organisations to make and advocate for change. I realised that I could combine this curiosity and passion by studying Global Public Health and started a MPhil Public Health at the University of Cambridge. From here, I am now continuing into a PhD in Public Health & Primary Care. As 80% of premature non-communicable diseases (NCDs) deaths happen in LMICS and local environmental risk factors (e.g. air pollution, water pollution) are increasingly being associated with NCDs, it is critical to develop effective, context specific interventions. Therefore, my PhD will focus on the environmental risk factors for non-communicable disease in developing countries; comparing the urban and rural populations (specifically in South Asia). I am incredibly grateful to become a part of the Gates Community and to be able to dedicate the next years to researching this topic.

Previous Education

Utrecht University
University of Cambridge

During a BSc in Biology at Utrecht University, I became especially interested in protein structure. The images of 3D structures that could exhibit mechanical movement to drive biological processes captivated me. Hence, I followed this interest by doing an internship in a research institute in Berlin during a gap year. That year I also travelled by car from the Netherlands to China and experienced first-hand the social challenges faced by LGBTQI communities along the way. This sparked an interest in human rights in the Middle East and Central Asia. And during my subsequent MSc in Molecular and Cellular Life Sciences, I actively engaged in advocacy and activism with a Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights organisation. As part of my MSc, I worked in a research group at Utrecht University and at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge. In the latter, I focused on an approach that has only recently become possible – to study the structure of multi-protein complexes by cryo-electron microscopy. Visualizing the structure of these large molecular machines is fascinating and can considerably aid drug development for disease-causing protein variants. I am excited to continue this research at the LMB during a PhD in Biological Sciences. I will study the structure of “two-legged” proteins that can physically walk along fibres inside our cells. Furthermore, I remain a human rights advocate and look forward to joining the diverse and proactive Gates Cambridge community.

Previous Education

Utrecht University

I am a criminologist and applied social psychologist interested in the intersections between law and psychology. My current research includes studies of group crime, effect evaluations of various crime prevention programs, and related projects in the area of forensic psychology.

As an undergraduate at Duke University majoring in Public Policy and minoring in Psychology and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, I have focused on using policy for the advancement of gender equality, whether through combatting campus sexual assault, advocating for transgender rights in Ecuador, or increasing menstrual product access for girls and women in Kenya and the US. I recently completed my honors thesis on sex work in Ecuador and Argentina, examining the importance of physical workspaces to sex workers’ conditions and how states regulate sex work space. Through the MPhil in Development Studies at Cambridge, I plan to further study how states and citizens negotiate space in cities and explore methods for combatting poverty in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. I am honored to have been selected to become a member of the Gates-Cambridge community.

Previous Education

Duke University

Previous Education

University of Twente M.Sc Computer Science 2001

I have had a rather eclectic academic career, and have worked across several different areas of the humanities and social sciences in different countries around the globe. In light of the deteriorating climate crisis, my research has progressively shifted towards the environmental sciences, with a special focus on the study of the cryosphere.In my doctoral research, I will study “climate intervention” projects that have been suggested to help preserve elements of the cryosphere in the Arctic and the “Third Pole”. As global temperatures continue to rise, and effective emissions reductions fail to materialise, I foresee that such proposals to artificially interfere in the climate through technoscientific means will increasingly move onto the main stage of climate debates. Many of these schemes are however far from exemplary as postcolonial scientific projects, and the debates around them are highly polarised. During my doctoral studies I therefore hope to further the knowledge of such climate intervention projects, explore their influence on the public perception of climate change, and to facilitate debates on their relation to climate justice.

Previous Education

University Paris-Saclay & UVSQ Arctic Science 2022
Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (Leiden Univ) History 2017

I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of History, University of Basel, Switzerland.
For details on my research and publications, please visit https://unibasel.academia.edu/DanellevanZylHermann

My research and general interests centre around biodiversity and nature. Specifically, I am interested in the functional consequences of biodiversity change. I use functional traits (traits of organisms that are related to how they interact with their environment, such as flat claws for digging) and ecological modelling techniques to measure changes in functional diversity through space and time. My postdoc at OSU seeks to test how small mammal functional diversity changed in the face of climate instability before and after the extinction of large mammals (e.g. mammoths). My other projects aim to test how amphibian communities are structured over large land masses and to quantify the functional impact of amphibian declines due to threats like invasive species.

In my PhD, I researched how sources of variation such as sex or season affects the skin thickness of amphibians to better understand if skin physiology might explain the disproportionately high number of amphibian species threatened with extinction. Before my PhD, I studied the functional traits of fossil species to better understand the ecology of dinosaurs.

Born in Utah, I was raised the oldest of six siblings first there and then just outside of Portland, Oregon. "Unschooled" until the age of 16 my foray into traditional education began with a handful of highschool classes, and then a dive into Spanish language, music and biology at the local community college, where I quickly developed a taste for academic work. As a non-traditional student I graduated first with an AAOT in General Studies from Clackamas Community College and then with honors from Pacific University in 2008, where I received a B.A. in Politics and Government. After graduation I lived and worked in the Alta Verapaz of Guatemala where I developed an interest in women's leadership education and the ongoing interactions between globalized western culture, local cultures and the evolution of ancient traditions.

I am a scientist and singer pursuing an MPhil at the Cambridge Centre for Music and Science. At Princeton University, I majored in neuroscience with a certificate in vocal performance. As a student of both neuroscience and music, I have always been interested in the scientific study of music’s effects on mind and body. While a dominant narrative within music and medicine focuses on music’s therapeutic effects during the illness state, I am interested in further exploring its impact on healthy individuals, from the perspective of music as a tool to enhance community health. One of the most unique stages of life during which music can exert its effects is in early infancy, when mothers and families of infants can expose their children to an enriching musical environment, which has been shown time and again to have benefits for infants along various developmental avenues. At Cambridge my research will specifically examine the reciprocal effects of infant-directed singing on mother and child, looking at how such music modulates physiological arousal/stress. I plan on pursuing a medical career and hope to engage with community music programs that operate out of healthcare settings throughout my life. In my time at Cambridge I also look forward to participating in its vibrant choral tradition.

Previous Education

Princeton University