Directory

I am interested in strengthening the historiography of my country through studying past material culture. My research will include extracting information from trees and tree-rings in association with other archaeological finds to construct a more objective account of the past.

I'm originally from West Orange, NJ and I'm currently a seminarian with the Congregation of Holy Cross (the same religious community as fellow Gates Scholars Fr. Kevin Grove C.S.C. and Fr. Chase Pepper C.S.C.) pursuing my Masters of Divinity at the University of Notre Dame.

I previously served a Lieutenant in the US Navy, designated as a Submarine Warfare Officer. I completed my undergraduate education at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, where I received a Dual Major in Mechanical Engineering (BS) and Ocean Engineering (BS), and was a 4 Year Member of the Varsity Lightweight Rowing Team. I earned an MPhil in Energy Technologies as a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University.

In September of 2014, after my time in Cambridge, I completed the Navy Nuclear Training Pipeline in Charleston SC at NNPTC and qualified Engineering Officer of the Watch at NPTU on the MTS-635 S5W Reactor.

In May 2016 I reported to the USS HARTFORD, a Los Angeles Class Fast Attack Submarine in Groton Connecticut. I previously served as the Fire Control Officer, Anti-Terrorism Officer, Chemical-Radiological Controls Assistant, Assistant Engineer, Assistant Operations Officer, and most recently as the Communications Officer and Primary COMSEC Manager (Both EKMS and KMI). I qualified Submarines in June of 2017, and completed the Prospective Nuclear Engineer Officer's Course (PNEO) to be certified as an Engineer in S6G plants. In 2017 I served as the EOOW and JOOW during one EUCOM Deployment. In 2018 I served as the Primary Officer of the Deck (OOD) during ICEX 2018 and a Surge Deployment. I served as Contact Manager and OOD during my third and final deployment to EUCOM.

In 2019 I left the USS HARTFORD and reported to the US Naval Academy, where I serve as a Physics Instructor, the Officer Representative for the Catholic Midshipman Club and a Volunteer LWT Rowing Coach.

My hobbies and interests include multi-day hiking, long distance cycling, renewable and alternative energy, and mountain climbing. My longest ride to date was a 10 day cycling trip across the UK totaling 1,089 miles.

Previous Education

Yale University BA-History 2010

I am the Director of Graduate Studies for the Data Science Initiative at Brown University. I arrived at Brown in 2015 after completing a PhD in mathematics at MIT and served for three years as a Tamarkin Assistant Professor in the department of mathematics. I won the university's Teaching with Technology award and am currently developing online learning resources for data science.

For the past four summers, I have worked with the Office of Minority Education at MIT as a mathematics instructor for their Interphase program, which is designed to prepare and support incoming freshmen.

My research area is mathematical probability: I study random, discrete two-dimensional systems and various continuum objects that emerge as limits of these discrete systems.

Zach Watson is the Chief of Staff and the global development nonprofit Evidence Action, based in Washington, DC.

Evidence Action takes the most evidence-supported development interventions in the areas of health, water, sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition, and scales them massively to achieve cost-effective impacts that improve the lives of millions. As Chief of Staff, Zach supports the CEO's strategy and implementation for new and existing programs.

Most recently, he served as a Fellow in the Chief of Staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group, where he performed long-term strategic forecasting and analysis. He has served in various command and staff roles in support of U.S. Army units in the Pacific and in Afghanistan.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Arabic Language from West Point and a Master of Philosophy degree in Development Studies from Cambridge University.

“Philosophy is written in this vast book, which continuously lies upon before our eyes (I mean the universe). But it cannot be understood unless you have first learned to understand the language and recognize the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics” (Galileo). The Galilean ideal that the beauty of nature is definable mathematically is empirically verifiable in the uniquely human capacity for language. We are genetically endowed with the mental (computational) algorithms to generate linguistic expressions of technically infinite complexity (explicable in terms of set theory and algebra). To discover the mathematical laws that emerged in our evolution to govern the generative power of language is the desideratum of my research--research that would be impossible for me to conduct but for the Gates Scholarship with its audacity to suppose with me that pure science (pure mathematics) will ultimately redound to the good of nature.

Since childhood, I was always fascinated by developmental biology. I wanted to understand how a single cell could become a complex organism. After matriculating as an Honors Biology student at the University of Delaware, I joined Dr. Salil A. Lachke’s developmental genetics laboratory where I studied the role of RNA-binding protein-mediated post-transcriptional regulation in mammalian ocular lens development. Simultaneously, I explored my passions for education access and science advocacy. Since 2014, I’ve worked with Leading Youth Through Empowerment – a non-profit that offers accelerated coursework to high-achieving at-risk youth. I also participated in the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s Advocacy Training Program through which I met with the offices of my senators and representative to advocate for science funding and education.At Cambridge, I will carry out my Ph.D. project in the laboratory of Dr. Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz studying the post-implantation development of human and mouse embryos. Post-implantation stages are referred to as the “black box” of development, and very little is known about these early stages when many pregnancies fail. Recently, Dr. Zernicka-Goetz’s group developed a culture system that opened this “black box” and I look forward to finding what lies within it. I am honored to join the motivated and interdisciplinary Gates Cambridge community.

Previous Education

University of Delaware Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences 2019

I am interested in the interplay between biology and behavior. After receiving a B.A. in biopsychology from Vassar College, I went on to obtain my M.S. in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Oregon. At Cambridge University, I am pursuing my Ph.D. at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. My research has focused on understanding how people control their behavior. Because the capacity to stop undesirable responses is related to positive life outcomes such as academic achievement and health, I hope to make both theoretical and practical contributions. For my dissertation, I have tested whether two superficially different types of responses, thoughts and actions, are stopped using the same cognitive processes. I have also been investigating to what extent different types of stopping rely on common brain regions, and whether individual differences in ability to prevent unwanted actions is related to differing brain structure or connectivity.

My choice to undertake a PhD in monetary policy is due to my deep interest in the subject and to my future career plans: Upon graduation, I would like to pursue a career as a professional economist in a central bank or international organisation. A PhD in monetary policy will equip me with the necessary knowledge, which I hope to be able to use eventually to contribute to the further development of a unified Europe.

As a California native with bi-racial British and Chinese heritage, I sensed a deep commitment to promoting exchange from an early age. My research to date has focused on two commodities—chocolate and coffee—with cross-cultural and interdisciplinary overlap. I study how these commodities are linked to broader concerns like human wellbeing and ecosystem services in the context of an evolving world. In 2011 I graduated from Wellesley College in 2011 with a B.A. in Economics and Spanish. My undergraduate thesis examined the role of cacao through the dynamically changing sociocultural history of Mexico. Upon completion of this work, I returned to Mexico to study coffee—a similar yet distinctly different commodity. Supported by a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholarship (2013-2014), I worked in collaboration with an ongoing interdisciplinary initiative called Café In Red at the Institute of Ecology, A.C. to understand socioeconomic considerations of small-scale coffee producers in Central Veracr

My research is on identifying and achieving synergies in mergers and acquisitions in Medical Device industry. I choose qualitative methodology for my research. In the past two years I have been to several companies (across several sectors) to do case studies to collect data.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, I am very grateful to have had teachers who from early on nurtured my passion for historical inquiry. My research to date has centred around post-imperial projects of world-making and solidarity. As an undergraduate, I investigated postcolonial economic thought in the Caribbean, with a particular focus on Michael Manley, members of the New World Group, and advocacy for the New International Economic Order. During my MPhil, I returned to the topic of the New International Economic Order, examining how various British constituencies responded to this bold programme demanding global economic reform. At Cambridge, I intend to explore an adjacent instance of postcolonial ‘world-making’ by examining how networks and expressions of Afro-Asian solidarity in support of the Black Power movement emerged and evolved – both across the Caribbean and within the United Kingdom. I hope that this research will shed light not only on how intersectional solidarity manifests and operates, but also on the implications of such historical solidarity for contemporary anti-racism movements. I am honoured to be able to pursue this research as part of the Gates Cambridge community.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Economic and Social History 2022
Harvard University History 2021

I am a commercial lawyer with a nagging interest in analytic philosophy. In 2004-5, I took a break from legal practice to satisfy that interest at Cambridge. It was a pleasure and honour to study analytic philosophy at Cambridge, where the discipline was substantially invented.

Our planet is undergoing simultaneous transformations, with climate change, habitat degradation, pollution, invasive species, disease, and overexploitation posing significant threats to the environment. To truly grasp the impact of these pressures on species, it is essential to delve into their long-term implications and understand how they synergistically interact and cascade within an ecosystem. These are questions that have fascinated me since my undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan. My research in India, where I collaborated with Professor Trevor Price at the University of Chicago, examined the effects of land use change on avian communities and morphology. During my master’s degree at the University of Edinburgh, I studied a different environmental stressor - microplastic pollution. I investigated its interplay with water temperature, aiming to understand how warmer oceans might influence microplastic uptake in sponges. At Cambridge, I will pursue a PhD in Plant Sciences under Professor David Edwards. I will be studying avian communities in Borneo to unravel temporal changes within logged and pristine forests and assess how climate change might exacerbate the impacts of land degradation.

Previous Education

The University of Edinburgh Marine Systems and Policies 2021
University of Michigan Ecology Evolution Biodiversity 2019

My academic career has been driven by a dual passion for language and the brain. Pursuing degrees in neuroscience and Korean at the Georgia Institute of Technology made me curious about how language is acquired and processed neurally. While my experience as a student of Korean inspired questions about language, time spent in neuroscience courses and laboratories taught me about the tools needed to answer those questions. Now, I intend to investigate the neural underpinnings of speech perception at Cambridge’s MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. My goal is to research the ways in which our brains deal with ambiguous speech. As anyone who has learned a new language will attest, it can be exceptionally difficult to identify the words produced by native speakers. In addition, myriad factors—such as a loud environment, accented speech, or unfamiliar vocabulary—can make fulfilling one’s role as a listener more difficult even in one’s native language. By discovering what scenarios allow for optimal word learning, I hope to inform more effective methods in language pedagogy. I am beyond honored to be joining the Gates Cambridge community and look forward to meeting my fellow scholars at Cambridge.

Previous Education

Georgia Institute of Technology Korean Studies 2021

I am a journalist and writer from Los Angeles. My work explores the relationship between my generation’s environmental and technological inheritances. As an undergraduate at Princeton, I used breaks to embed with scientists in Alaska, visiting the largest glacier in the American Arctic, living off-grid in winter to research permafrost, and walking and packrafting across the Brooks Range to study the boreal forest’s poleward migration. After graduating in 2020, I received a Luce Scholarship to study the climate crisis in Nepal, but after the pandemic derailed my plans there, I instead reported on the economic and health impacts of COVID-19. My writing has appeared in the LA Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Literary Hub, Washington Post, and other publications. I am now writing a narrative nonfiction book — equal parts adventure, science, cultural criticism, and nature writing — that recounts my journeys into the Alaskan wilderness to study climate change and shed light on digitally induced blindspots in my generation’s environmental consciousness. As a PhD candidate in Polar Studies at Cambridge, I plan to continue exploring these questions under the mentorship of Professor Michael Bravo. In my free time, I run trails, surf, and volunteer as an ocean therapist.

Previous Education

Princeton University English 2020
University College London English 2018