Directory

I am an international lawyer from the US and incoming-PhD candidate in International Relations & Politics. My research focuses on digital surveillance and data protection in the FemTech industry. Motivated to pursue this research following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US in June 2022, I sought to harness my experience as a litigator and researcher at the intersection of law and technology to build a project aimed at investigating the burgeoning global data economy surrounding FemTech, and how to protect the data ecosystem of FemTech products from misuse and abuse under the incentive structures created by legal regimes hostile to reproductive freedoms. Previously as a practicing attorney, I have worked at a global law firm, concentrating my practice on international arbitration and foreign sovereign litigation matters, and particularly on matters concerning issues of public international law. There, I maintained an active pro bono practice of matters concerning international human rights and international criminal law. This involved, for example, working with the Human Trafficking Legal Clinic to seek justice for migrant workers in diplomatic households in proceedings before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and with the Center for Reproductive Rights in proceedings challenging Texas' SB-8 abortion ban. I also assisted in the drafting of comments on the ICC’s policy guide for gender-based crimes with the PILPG, and supervised student research on the applicability of international law in cyberspace with Temple University Law School’s Institute for Innovation, Law & Technology. It is a privilege to have the opportunity to pivot these interests into my full-time focus as a PhD candidate at Cambridge.

Previous Education

University of Pennsylvania Law 2021
University of Cambridge International Relations 2018
Lafayette College International Affairs & French 2017

I am an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and Research Associate at the Center on the Politics of Development at the University of California, Berkeley. In my book project, I examine the emergence as well as the political and social effects of indigenous autonomy in the Americas. The research for this project won the 2020 APSA Best Fieldwork Award. I also have published or have forthcoming work on local governance in Latin America, methods for causal inference, and the regulation of gig economy labor in the United States. All of my work employs a multi-method approach, using experimental and natural experimental data as well as extensive interviewing and archival research.

I received my PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020. I completed a Master's in Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge as a Gates-Cambridge scholar, and I hold a B.A. in Political Science and History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I studied as a Morehead-Cain scholar.

Previous Education

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Links

http://christopherleecarter.com

During my undergraduate studies at Duke University, I became fascinated with the immune system, especially with respect to its therapeutic applications for complex diseases. I pursued this interest during my translational glioblastoma research, studying engineered cytotoxic T cells alongside the cancer’s immune microenvironment. As my research progressed, I began to question the accessibility of scientific advancements, especially in the context of clinical medicine. Accordingly, I investigated the barriers to care and adverse health outcomes faced by Native Americans in North Carolina. I will continue this work in the lab of Professor Ziad Mallat, where I intend to study a promising immunotherapy for atherosclerosis. Given the disparate impact of heart disease on racial and ethnic minority groups within both the US and UK, such advancements are poised to have a significant social impact. Following my studies at Cambridge, I intend to pursue medical education in the US. Through my research, I hope to develop cardiovascular immunotherapies which will alleviate the burden of heart disease on individuals and their communities.

Previous Education

Duke University Chemistry (Pharmacology) 2022

I'm currently an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. I research galaxy formation and evolution from an observer's perspective; I use the Universe's most luminous galaxies to place constraints on the history of cosmic star-formation, collapse of large scale structure, and the formation of the first galaxies. I'm also interested in teaching pedagogy, how people learn, and how to make STEM fields more equitable and inclusive.

Previous Education

University of Arizona BS, Physics, Applied Math, Astronomy 2007

During my MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology at Cambridge I studied the impact of the quality of children’s human and pet relationships on their social and emotional wellbeing. I took this research a step further in my PhD in Psychiatry by examining the extent to which self-harm behaviours among adolescents can be predicted by the security of their attachments to their parents. Self-harm typically originates in adolescence, is addictive, socially contagious, and tends to escalate over time. As such, early interventions are imperative in order to prevent experimentation from becoming habit, incident from becoming epidemic, and harm from becoming suicide. I hope that by uncovering some of the etiological pathways to these deleterious behaviours, my research will lead to the development of more efficacious treatments and better prognoses for patients.

Previous Education

Univeristy of Cambridge 2013
Queen's Univeristy 2008

I came to Cambridge to study genetics because I love to travel and I love my science. My research at the University will involve integrating population structure parameters into algorithms that locate susceptability factors for complex disease within the human genome. I hope that one day this work can be used to personalise health care for each individual patient based on his or her own unique genetic make-up.

Andrés is Assistant Professor of Higher Education at Boston College's Lynch School of Education. His work enhances the experiences for students of color from under-resourced communities—specifically focusing on Hispanic-serving institutions. His expertise includes the social history of large-scale datasets in post-secondary education; educational researchers' use of data to explore issues of diversity; and the institutionalization of services for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender students.Previously, Castro Samayoa served as assistant director for assessment at the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions. His current projects concentrate on diversifying the teaching profession at the K–12 and post-secondary levels. One of these projects explores the ways Hispanic-serving institutions diversify faculty in the humanities and social sciences.He earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, his master’s degree from Cambridge University, and his doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Previous Education

Harvard University

As an Albanian immigrant in Italy, I have grown a strong understanding of the importance of building bridges between different cultures and the powerful impact that a correct comprehension of historical events has on the world today. This personal experience was enhanced by my permanence over the course of six months as an international civil servant at the orphanage Kituo cha Watoto Tumaini in Ilunda, Tanzania. I have a strong belief that these elements of my life have led me to the decision of dedicating my intellectual endeavours to enlighten the historical event that I consider essential for better understanding many of the challenges that we need to address today regarding cultural confrontation and religious tolerance, i.e. the encounter between Europeans and the Native Americans in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The goal of my PhD program consists in investigating this event - the greatest encounter in the history of mankind - and analysing the questions it prompts concerning topics such as human rights and cultural and religious confrontation. I am honoured to have been selected as a Gates Scholar and to share my social commitment with a community whose goal consists of improving the lives of others on a global scale.

Previous Education

Universita Degli Studi di Milano Philosophy 2020
Universita Degli Studi di Milano Philosophy 2018

Just 25 years ago, we had no evidence for planets outside our own solar system. Today, over 4000 exoplanets have been discovered. My research aims to determine how giant planets form by performing computer simulations of protoplanetary discs (discs of gas and dust that surround young stars, and are the birthplace of planets). Completing even a secondary-school level of education was not a given for me; in a family of six children, only three of us actually did, and I am the first in my family to attend university. The fact that I maintained a love of science and learning despite a difficult home life can be attributed directly to the inspiring teachers that I was lucky to have. One, in particular, hosted a 'math circle' for students after school, providing an accessible opportunity to explore the world of STEM outside of the classroom. I will always be thankful for that teacher, and for others like him. Those formative years of my life drive my passion for outreach today, and I strive for accessibility for all students, regardless of socioeconomic background. I am proud to say that my outreach endeavours currently include work with Sun Space Art, Cambridge Hands On Science (CHaOS), Nuffield research placements, and regular outreach with the Institute of Astronomy.

Previous Education

University of Dublin Trinity College Physics and Astrophysics 2019

Growing up in Peru, I have long been intrigued by how rural communities cope with the lasting impacts of the internal armed conflict. My academic journey at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú—where I earned both a Bachelor's and a Master's in Anthropology, specialising in transitional justice, human rights, and memory—deepened my commitment to these issues. My work with communities affected by the war, alongside my involvement with victim organisations and my experience as a lecturer and researcher, has enriched my understanding of the complex social and political dynamics in my country. At the University of Cambridge’s Centre of Latin American Studies, my PhD project, titled Andean Spaces of Death: Living with the Traces of the Peruvian Internal Armed Conflict in Rural Communities, will involve ethnographic research. This study explores how rural Andean communities rebuild social ties and cultural identities amid landscapes marked by clandestine burial sites and mass graves. By engaging directly with affected communities, I aim to offer a nuanced analysis of transitional justice in Latin America and contribute insights that may help shape policies from an intercultural and decolonial perspective.

Previous Education

Pontificia Universidad Catolica Del Peru Anthropology

Originally from Austin, Texas, I became interested in politics and public policy early; before Harvard, I worked on the election campaigns of several Texas politicians and at the Texas headquarters during the first Obama presidential campaign. I spent college summers interning at the Democratic Governors Association, the Clinton Foundation, and researching at Cambridge. In addition to leading a seminar for local high school students in Shanghai and acting as the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Undergraduate Law Review, I joined Harvard Model Congress as a freshman, and in my senior year, I was HMC's co-president and CEO. I taught high school students at HMC conferences in Boston, Singapore, Brussels, Madrid, San Francisco and Hong Kong, and I founded and led HMC Dubai, the first government simulation in the Middle East. For my MPhil, I attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge as the Harvard Scholar, and my PhD dissertation will investigate the American homophile movement in the 1960s. Above all, I’m grateful and excited to join the Gates Cambridge family!

Previous Education

Harvard University
University of Cambridge

I was first introduced to the world of computer vision during my time in Estonia. There, I participated in a computer vision in space course at the University of Tartu, where I learned how to apply various image processing techniques to autonomous systems. I was immediately enthralled and became fascinated by computer vision and its full potential. After completing my bachelor’s degree in computer science at Salisbury University, I returned to Estonia to partake in a year-long intensive research project at the Tartu Observatory, where I studied feature detectors. During my PhD at Cambridge, I will work with the CEB group to implement similar systems in microscopes in order to make them smarter and more self-sufficient. This development will greatly improve the imaging process for infectious diseases. My research is motivated by family members in Haiti who were affected by the 2010 cholera outbreak and are now facing a malaria epidemic. I believe computer vision can accelerate diagnostics and drug discovery for infectious diseases in vulnerable countries in the Global South. Moreover, I look forward to joining my cohort of Gates Cambridge Scholars and contributing to a community dedicated to research with meaningful global impact.

Previous Education

Salisbury University Computer Science 2026
University of Tartu Robotics/Computer Engineering 2024

As an undergrad, my interests took me around the world as I studied insurgent groups and how states and non-state actors chose to interact with them. At Cambridge, I read for an MPhil in International Relations with a focus on how states use military power to interact with other state and non-state actors and how an understanding of military capabilities shapes national strategic objectives.

I grew up in Jurupa Valley, California and attended the University of California, Riverside, where I completed a Bachelor of Arts in Media and Cultural Studies. My undergraduate education at UCR, combined with my experience as a visiting film studies student at Queen Mary University of London in 2019, provided me with the opportunity to study film in a stimulating interdisciplinary context. Combining sociohistorical and aesthetic methodologies, I developed my academic specialism, which is to analyze film form to interpret symbolism, metaphor, and philosophical meaning with the objective of exploring the representation of women in genre cinema. As a Film and Screen Studies student at Cambridge, I aim to expand upon my undergraduate research to produce scholarship that explores maternal horror in relation to the topics of motherhood, childbearing, and reproductive agency. Alongside my work in the academy, I plan to be a film producer, where I can champion nuanced, women-centered Latinx stories. I am deeply honored to be a Gates Cambridge Scholar and hope to pay it forward by ultimately creating a scholarship program of my own, one designed to provide vital resources and support to the next generation of arts and humanities scholars.

Previous Education

Queen Mary, University of London Study Abroad Program 2020
University of California Riverside Media and Cultural Studies 2020

Links

https://www.kathymichellechacon.com

Hailing from Seoul, South Korea, I did not encounter the classics until my freshman year at Princeton University, when I enrolled in Latin 101 almost on a whim. The following summer I took a course in Ancient Greek, and thus began an intense affair with languages, as I soon added French, Italian and German to my collection—all of which enhance my work with the classics. As someone with extensive experience in speech and debate, I have an equally strong commitment to political issues. My interests are perhaps best exemplified by my job at the Paideia Institute, a nonprofit organization for classical study, where I am a Research Fellow and edit its online journal for writing about the ancient world in modern ways, Eidolon. I was also a Master's student in History and Civilizations at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, France, where I researched Simone de Beauvoir’s classical education. I hope to expand on that project as I pursue an MPhil in Classics at the University of Cambridge, writing a thesis on the classical references in De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex while applying theory—particularly environmental and feminist theory—to the classics in order to gain insight into present-day problems such as the ecological crisis and gender inequality.

Previous Education

Princeton University
École des hautes études en sciences sociales

Originally from India, I graduated in May 2016 with B.S. in Biological Sciences and B.A. in Psychology from The State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. For my PhD, I studied mechanisms of inflammatory knee pain in the lab of Dr. Ewan St. John Smith at the Department of Pharmacology. Currently I am a Alexander von Humboldt fellow researching how we perceive touch at the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, Germany. I am also passionate about educational equality and hope to work with organizations around the world, especially in developing countries, to make quality education available to all. I am honoured and excited to become a member of the vibrant and compassionate Gates Cambridge community where scholars from across the world share the vision of making a difference in the world.

Previous Education

University at Buffalo

Using computational and experimental approaches, my research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology focussed on developing a statistical analytic framework to quantify the impact of sets of genetic information on gene expression via the secondary analysis of integrated experimental and bioinformatics data. In other words, my research aimed at better understanding how cells exert control over the expression of their own genes. I have recently taken a position at Monitor Deloitte where I work at the interface between strategy consulting and big data analytics, which allows me to witness and contribute to the digital transition of various businesses and public sector organisations towards data-based decision making.