Directory

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

After Cambridge I returned to my job as an environmental policy consultant in Washington, DC. In 2004, I took an economic policy job with the Senate Minority Leader, Tom Daschle. After Senator Daschle completed his final term, I became Economic Development Director for Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota.

I was born in Prague and grew up in Geneva. Following a BSc in Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh, I undertook an MSc in Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London. During my MSc project, I became fascinated by the connectome – a holistic description of brain connectivity, which can be studied using complex network theory. Subsequently, I obtained a research assistant position at the University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland to study connectome alterations in psychiatric disease. Although most psychiatric disorders emerge in adolescence, our limited understanding of brain development during this period hinders our ability to identify maturational aberrations. This has motivated my desire to undertake a PhD in Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, to study development of the connectome in adolescence using complex network theory.

What does education do? What roles does education play in shaping people’s identities, values and lifeworlds? Having worked as a teacher, a political consultant and a program manager with state education departments in India, I have been keen to derive a deeper understanding of what education does. My first book, titled “The Smart and the Dumb”, takes a journalistic view of how education and culture intersect in India and is due for release in early 2023 by Penguin Randomhouse. My PhD research will focus on how elite education in India creates and reproduces caste and class identities. Through my research, I hope to unpack the mechanisms of how identities reproduce and manifest themselves in new forms through education and how elites contribute to these dynamics.

Previous Education

Harvard University International Education Policy 2020
Anna University Mechanical Engineering 2016

After completing my graduate studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, I have worked in the culture industry of India, focusing on contemporary art of South Asia as a researcher, critic, and curator. Being involved with organisations that challenge authoritarianism, I am interested in how art and activism intersect in powerful and necessary ways. My learning in art has been shaped by ‘doing’—working with artists and collectives, working against capitulatory institutions, and working towards sites of freedom. It is a mode of learning driven by shared spaces, cross-disciplinary pollination and open pedagogies such as reading groups, writing workshops, and public seminars. Such formats of ‘thinking with’ are integral to my scholarship. My research on the mediatic transfers between the photographic and painted image emerging from cites of civic resistance in India will chart a history of lively contestation over notions of the public sphere, articulations of dissent, acts of collective organising, and assertions of difference. By engaging with the history of civic action from below, I hope to draw vital insights into the evolving political ecology of resistance, and its cultural afterlife as image and icon.

Children have an innate ability to bring joy to and captivate those around them with their vitality and innocence. My passion for paediatric health and welfare stems from their resilience and eternal optimism - improving the lives of children is my core belief and central motivation for paediatric oncology. I derive my childhood and education from Australia, cultural heritage from India and passion for children’s healthcare and equity of access from both. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science, Medicine and Surgery from the University of New South Wales, and Masters in Medicine from the University of Sydney. Currently I am a clinical fellow with the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, developing new treatments for refractory cancers, having previously trained in paediatrics and haematology/oncology with Sydney Children’s Hospital. My research in Cambridge will focus on childhood leukaemia, and explore the role quiescent cancer stem cells play in refractory and relapsed disease. My greater goal is to continue paediatric stem cell research in Australia as a clinician scientist.

Previous Education

University of Sydney
University of New South Wales

Previous Education

University of Notre Dame Bachelor of Architecture 2013

As an undergraduate at Kansas State University double majoring in Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, I worked in the lab of Dr. Kathrin Schrick where I pursued multiple independent projects. I used biophysical tools to characterize direct targets of dietary flavonoids, which are abundantly found in fruits and vegetables and are known to possess anti-cancerous properties. This project emerged from my quest to understand protein-flavonoid interactions. As the only person conducting this research, I had to teach myself a lot of different techniques and face numerous challenges, but in the process I developed a great love and appreciation for the visualization of protein structures. During my PhD in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), I will be using electron cryo-microscopy to uncover new structures of activated states of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Over 40% of commercially available drugs target GPCRs; therefore, it is important to understand their structures to design new drugs to treat a variety of human diseases. I am very excited to contribute to advances in electron cryo-microscopy, and I am grateful for this opportunity to work alongside and learn from world-class scientists in the LMB. Besides science, I enjoy working towards bridging global health disparities. I have worked with MEDLIFE in Peru and Ecuador, and I also run my own non-profit WE SAVE in India where we are developing technology to connect doctors with underserved patients.

Previous Education

Kansas State University

It is a great honor for me to be a Gates scholar, to have studied at the University of Cambridge. Bearing in mind that the policy of the trust is to help people, it is also a great responsibility for me in the future. I am very grateful for the help I have received from the trust in the hardship I was going through during my studying at Cambridge.

My interest in International Criminal Law as a field of study grew out of the internship I did at the ICTY, during my second year at the University of Bristol. I was fascinated by the discrepancies in practice of International Criminal Law and what I was being taught. I wanted to further explore this during my LLM at the LSE, where I researched how the ICTY produces a narrative about Bosnia as a gendered and ethnicized “other.” Since graduating from the LSE I have co-authored two books and co-founded the only feminist magazine in Bosnia. I am currently a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths College, where I am working on a feminist critique of the legal discourse surrounding Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. At Cambridge my research will explore ICL as a site of knowledge production through the prisms of Critical Legal Studies, Feminist Legal Scholarship and Third World Approaches to Law. This research is important because it will not merely explore how the ICTY produces knowledges about Bosnia that are ethnicized and gendered, but also at how these knowledges (and the process of their production) produce a certain truth about the wider project of International Criminal Law (ICL). I will seek to explore to what extent the very survival of ICL is contingent on the ascendance of particularly gendered and ethnicized knowledges to the status of truth. I am incredibly humbled to be the first scholar from Bosnia to be joining the Gates Cambridge Community.

Previous Education

University of Bristol
London School of Economics and Political Science

I am reading Part III Maths (MASt) at the University of Cambridge. I was born in India but have been living in the United States for most of my life. Just recently, I graduated from Harvard University with an AB in maths and an SM in computer science. My main research interests lie in the fields of analysis as well as theoretical computer science, which offers an interesting blend of mathematics and computer science. After completing Part III, I plan to enter a PhD program.

Previous Education

Harvard University English, South Asian Studies 2021

Previous Education

Newcastle University MRes Medical and Molecular Biosciences 2008
Bangalore University BSc Biotechnology 2007

My current research mostly relates to microeconomic theory.

I am a researcher, psychologist, and educator passionate about fostering safe, sensitive and playful conditions for learning. I studied Psychology in UCA, Nicaragua and later an MPhil in Psychology and Education at the University of Cambridge with a Chevening scholarship. I have worked as a teacher, therapist, researcher and implementer of educational projects in Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. Coming from the Nicaraguan permanent state of emergency, I am confident in the transformative power of education and play to promote collective wellbeing and lasting peace. Instead of a deficit narrative regarding children in emergencies, my research proposal aims to acknowledge the creative ways in which children facing adversity use play. In the midst of pain, play sneaks in to offer not only a moment of joy, but agency over the narrative, control over the uncontrollable. Play offers the possibility to practice the strategies that allow children to overcome the adversity from which we have unjustly failed to protect them.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Psychology and Education 2021
Universidad Centroamericana Psychology 2019