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I had the good fortune to receive my first Gates scholarship to study mitochondria-targeted antioxidants and other related chemicals, which could potentially help in the treatment of diseases such a Parkinson disease or Alzheimer's dementia. In 2008 I will study towards a MPhil in the history and philosophy of science, again supported by the Gates Cambridge Trust. Understanding the philosophical basis of modern science is, in my view, crucial if we are to solve the many problems in modern biomedical science and practice - from cognitive sciences to medical ethics.

My PhD concerns the relationship between abstract problem solving and the cortical motor system, with a special focus on mental arithmetic. The way in which we process abstract knowledge such as numerical symbols is a highly topical field in current neuroscience. Research has found that a child’s level of motor skill, such as performing complex finger movements, can predict arithmetic task performance. It is thought that a sense of numbers might be acquired through finger counting. I am investigating the interactions between brain areas that initiate movement and those that are involved in complex arithmetic. By using EEG/MEG techniques, I am especially interested in the time-course of activation in neural networks of abstract problem solving. I believe my research will impact upon interventions for people with problems processing numbers and has theoretical and practical implications for teaching mathematics.

I am looking to further explore my interest in healthcare policy and business at Cambridge.

Choral music has been an integral part of my life since childhood. Spurred by the intrepid spirit of my hometown, the San Francisco Bay Area, I seek to explore music that lies off the beaten track. This journey has taken me from medieval music, with its strikingly different conception of text and authorship, to avant-garde works examining such controversial topics as same-sex marriage or mass surveillance. Through choral music, I aim to humanize the abstract for performers and listeners alike, opening minds to different cultures and new perspectives. Since graduating from university, I have served as music director for an Episcopal church and the new chamber choir Convivium, alongside performing with San Francisco Lyric Opera, Philharmonia Baroque, and Volti. At Cambridge, I hope to combine my academic interest in early music with practical conducting training. I look forward to experiencing the university’s rich musical culture and gaining a global perspective on the choral art.

After graduating from Cambridge’s Development Studies M.Phil. programme in 2002, I worked at Public Citizen and CEPR in DC. There, I worked to ensure that U.S. policies allow countries to grow adequately and sustainably. In the fall of 2012, I will begin writing my PhD dissertation on the implications of the investor-state dispute settlement system for development policy. Few social scientists have studies this mechanism – whereby corporations can sue governments over financial and environmental policies. Rightsizing these agreements – mostly written before recent natural and man-made disasters reminded us of the virtues of sensible public interest safeguards – will be one of the central tasks for international governance in the 21st century. I hope to help train the next generation of policymakers, business leaders and advocates on how to design democratically accountable and effective global solutions to our most pressing problems, from climate change to income inequality.

In 2009, I graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Criminology, Law & Society from the University of California, Irvine (UCI). I assisted my department in the exploration of rehabilitative programs for juvenile sex offenders. I also interned for the Attorney General's Office for the District of Columbia and served as chapter vice president of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). During my last year at UCI, I carried out a brief qualitative study on women serving life sentences in a southern California prison. I am interested in researching the criminalisation of women, specifically those who are seeking asylum in the United Kingdom. My study will evaluate the efficacy of the asylum system in addressing women's claims of gender persecution. More specifically, I will be looking at the discretionary power of immigration officials in detaining and criminalising female asylum applicants.

Previous Education

The University of Auckland BMus (Classical Performance) / BSc (Psychology); BMus (Hons, Musicology) 2014

Domiziana is a DPhil Candidate in Migration Studies and Clarendon Scholar investigating how families shape and are shaped by onward migration. Her doctoral research focuses on the experiences of onward Colombian families who moved from Spain to London.

Between June 2020 and June 2021, Domiziana co-led the project “Enhancing the impact of migration research with Latin Americans in London”, which sought to understand the impact of Brexit and COVID-19 on London’s Latin American migrants by building links with the community through knowledge exchange and engagement activities. The findings were published in the form of an executive summary geared towards the general public and available here.

In 2020, she worked as a research consultant for the project ‘Promoting Inclusion to Combat Early School Leaving’ co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and promoting inclusive intercultural pedagogies for student engagement by bringing together researchers and teachers from schools from four EU countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Croatia).

As of September 2020, Domiziana was appointed convener of the interdisciplinary Oxford Migration and Mobility Network which draws together researchers of migration and mobility from across the University of Oxford. From 2019 to 2021, she served as editor and then co-editor-in-chief of the Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration Journal.

Domiziana completed her MPhil in Sociology at the University of Cambridge in July 2019 with a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Prior to moving to the UK, she completed her BA in Liberal Arts and Science at Amsterdam University College, where she ventured to understand the educational experiences and the peer culture of Moroccan-Dutch youth in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Previous Education

University of Amsterdam

Links

https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/people/domiziana-turcatti
https://www.facebook.com/domiziana.turcatti
https://www.linkedin.com/in/domiziana-turcatti-711835191

After studying International Relations and History at Wellesley College, I spent eight years working on global gender policy in Washington, DC at the National Democratic Institute, the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security, and the Council on Foreign Relations. My research on gender, conflict, and foreign policy focused on women's political agency and organizing—from their contributions to Track I peace negotiations, to their roles in terrorist groups. Through field work in Tunisia, Northern Ireland, Kenya, and China, I recognized how critical women's networks are to advancing change. During my History PhD at Cambridge I plan to study how women's transnational organizing influenced global policy in the 20th century, focusing on the contributions of women from the Middle East and North Africa. Understanding how women built and leveraged global networks offers an important perspective on rising international feminist activism today. 

Previous Education

Georgetown University Security Studies 2017
Wellesley College Internatnl Relations-History 2012

Through my travel experiences in Romania and Southeast Asia, I realized how the environment critically determines human development conditions, such as health, safety, and economy. My passion for climate change mitigation motivated me to study Civil & Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, where I quickly recognized the multitudinous benefits of renewable energy solutions. During my summer internship at the World Bank, I discovered how clean energy could help low income countries become energy independent, improve human quality of life, and reduce global carbon emissions. As an MPhil in Energy Technologies at Cambridge, I seek to address the trade-offs of deploying bioenergy in the transport sector, investigated through the lens of environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. I am honored to be joining the community of Gates Cambridge scholars and look forward to exploring the applications of energy technologies towards global development.

Previous Education

Princeton University

Growing up in Kyrgyzstan during the fall of the Soviet Union, I developed a strong interest in the economic issues of countries striving to lift themselves out of poverty. I decided to major in Economics and Political Science and to take advantage of the excellent classes on development and transition economies offered at my university, Wellesley College, MA, USA and while on my junior year abroad at the University of Oxford, UK. Over the course of my studies, I explored policies aimed at stimulating growth of businesses and wrote my undergraduate thesis on determinants of enterprise performance in Russia and other transition economies. At the University of Cambridge, I intend to continue my research on the role of public policy in enterprise development. Ultimately, I hope to become a professional economist and contribute to the improvement of business performance and market competitiveness in transition economies.

As a Korean American raised in Boise, Idaho who dreamed of becoming a lawyer, I never imagined that a few of my first friends at Emory University would be Tibetan monks, or that I would ultimately pursue an academic concentration in Neuroscience and Ethics. During my time at Emory, and while completing my MPhil at the University of St Andrews, I was exposed to the interdisciplinary nature of neuroscience as well as the growing field of neuroethics. My diverse research experiences as well as remarkable mentors have cultivated my ambition to research and apply translational neuroscience to enhance human wellbeing while raising awareness regarding the ethical, legal, and social implications of neuroscientific research. My PhD at University of Cambridge's MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit will investigate the neurophysiological underpinnings of resilience in children growing up in poverty, with the motivation that achieving wellbeing is a global endeavor. The overarching aims are to better understand the neural mechanisms underlying this adaptive trait for conquering extreme stress and adversity and to translate our findings for interventions and policies to promote resilience in children from all backgrounds. It is an absolute honor to receive the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and I am thrilled to become a part of this global community as well as to learn from this inspirational group of individuals.

Previous Education

Emory University
University of St Andrews

My planned research centres on the pressing questions of why certain people engage in corruption when its consequences can ultimately deprave the political system, rig the global economy and ruin the environment. And why do some refuse to?To answer these questions, I will explore the interplay of personal and situational factors in an experimental bribery game. Little can be done against corruption without a nuanced understanding of its causes. Through unpacking an individual-level mechanism of corrupt decision-making, I wish to respond to the ever-growing demand for evidence-based anti-corruption strategies.After observing how my home country’s newly-won democratic institutions were gradually eroded by political venality from 2015 onwards, with an ensuing deterioration in its Corruption Perception Index position, I began to focus my research on the subject. As it is by no means a merely regional problem, I plan to collect my data in under-researched jurisdictions of the Global South with the aim of studying the phenomenon in some of the societies it most affects.I am thrilled to join this global network dedicated to bettering the lives of others and profusely thank Gates Cambridge Trust for their generous support.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge MPhil in Criminology 2023
University of Heidelberg German and European Law 2021
Jagiellonian University Law 2019