Dr. Lindsay Chura is currently the Chief Scientific Officer for the Global Council on Brain Health, an AARP and Age UK collaborative, focused on providing clear and dependable recommendations for maintaining and improving brain health. Lindsay previously held the position as Senior Policy Advisor for Science and Innovation at the British Embassy in Washington where she advised the Ambassador on international health and science issues impacting the UK/US bilateral relationship in addition to leading science diplomacy delegations abroad. Lindsay received her doctorate in Psychiatry at Cambridge for her research that applied neuroimaging techniques to investigate brain structure and function in children with autism she worked with across England. As a Gates Cambridge Scholar, she was actively involved in the scholarship community and managed the Gates Distinguished Lecture Series for two years as an officer on the Scholars’ Council. Prior to studying in the UK, Lindsay was a Fulbright Scholar at a clinic in Australia specialising in reproductive medicine. An alumna of Mount Holyoke College, Lindsay has published across a range of scientific domains, and has previously written for US News & World Report as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mass Media Fellow. She enjoys engaging with schools and the wider community through science outreach activities.
Coming from a family of medical professionals, science was ingrained in me from an early age. I was raised in Istanbul where I had the opportunity of higher education at Sabanci University. I was drawn to materials science for its potential to tackle global challenges, and the intersection of materials science and healthcare innovation is where my academic interests converge. I recently completed my master's degree at EPFL and have since been engaged in interdisciplinary work.Embarking on the next chapter of my journey, I'm honoured to be joining the Gates Cambridge community. I will pursue a Ph.D. at the Cambridge Centre for Medical Materials, working on tissue engineering scaffolds for regenerative medicine.
My research aims at understanding the nature of protein-ligand interactions and their importance in biological processes. For these purposes, various biophysical techniques will be used and developed towards potential applications to discover novel drugs. I believe my experience at Cambridge will be invaluable and will provide me a strong basis for a future career of research in drug discovery. I am thankful to the Gates Cambridge Trust for giving me this opportunity.
My interest in theology began in high school and college while working as a youth director and student chaplain. Those experiences led me to attend Duke Divinity School after graduating from Wheaton College in 2002. At Duke, the intersection between religion, environment, economy, and politics became clearer to me. I participated on a publication panel at the 8th World Wilderness Congress in Anchorage, AK, examining this intersection for sustainable human communities. After finishing my MTS at Duke I earned another master’s degree in philosophy at Fordham. For my MPhil research in Divinity at Cambridge I will work on Augustine’s ‘City of God’ while focusing on the contemporary issue of political secularization. Cambridge affords me an unparalleled interdisciplinary opportunity and the Gates community’s emphasis on knowledge in service of an ‘international common good’ will no doubt challenge my own thinking and expand my sense of vocational horizon between faith and public life.
Before I started my medical degrees at Monash University I lived in Donald, a tiny farming community in Australia. With this rural upbringing I have always been motivated to provide the highest level of care to sick children wherever they may call home.My career as a paediatric doctor began at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, but I made my way to Cambridge after a year working in the paediatric intensive care unit in Edinburgh, Scotland and some brief stints in rural and outback Australia. It is a privilege to help the families and children we care for in often brief but life changing moments.At Cambridge, I am working on a study called RASCALS – the ‘Rapid Assay for Sick Children with Acute Lung infection Study’ with the supervision of Dr Nazima Pathan and Prof Stephen Baker. We’re using new techniques to diagnose chest infection in critically ill children faster and researching genetic makers of antibiotic resistance so we can prevent treatment failure. Infection is one of the leading causes of death in children aged less than 5 years, so it’s exciting to try and make a difference in this area. This would not have been possible without the extensive support of Gates-Cambridge.
Monash University Perioperative Medicine 2018
University of Sydney Child Health 2014
Yale University B.A. Mathematics 2007
I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, and received my B.A. in American Studies and History from Northwestern University. At university, I developed an interest in the history of American imperialism and the history of popular culture. I was particularly fascinated by the intersection of these fields–what could imperial themes in popular culture tell historians about how everyday people thought about their country’s empire? For my senior thesis, I explored ideologies of imperialism in popular American children’s texts from the first half of the twentieth century. I will continue this research at Cambridge, taking a comparative approach between American children’s books and classic British children’s texts. This research will shed light on the distinctive qualities of US imperialism at the popular level, not just the diplomatic one. I believe strongly in the impact of historical research, and have witnessed firsthand how a greater understanding of history can shape an individual's engagement with the world. After Cambridge, and with the support of the Gates community, I hope to not only share my research with the broader public but also strengthen a public commitment to historical engagement.
Northwestern University American Studies & History
I am passionate about nature conservation and sustainable natural resource management. For the past four years, I have worked as Chief Executive Officer of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW. I have a multidisciplinary background in environmental science, law and public advocacy. I have worked as a researcher, lecturer and public interest environmental lawyer in Australia, South America and the Pacific Islands, including work for IUCN, WWF, Conservation International and the Wildlife Conservation Society. Throughout my career, I have focused on the intersection between community rights and environmental protection, from public participation in environmental decision-making to community-based natural resource management. I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to study conservation leadership at Cambridge. The integration of environmental policy, business administration and leadership skills will provide a strong foundation for my future contribution to global conservation efforts.
Acquiring knowledge and skills has always been a passion of mine. I first started coding at 13, being the only girl and person of colour in my course. I quickly realised that I had to work hard to earn my place in technology and AI. At the age of 15, I started visiting university lectures in various subjects ranging from Computer Science to Philosophy and Cybernetics. I quickly developed an interest in the complexities of AI. Thus, I completed a BSc in AI and Robotics and continued with an MSc in AI and Natural Language Processing. Simultaneously, I worked with a humanoid robot at the German Aerospace Center and later explored the societal impacts of AI at the Ada Lovelace Institute. I have been an active member of various organisations that raise awareness of algorithmic bias and AI literacy while empowering people from marginalised communities to follow their goals in AI. With a passion for bridging cultural and linguistic divides, I aspire to lead research initiatives through my PhD that contribute to the development of responsible and inclusive AI systems, ensuring that language technologies are accessible, fair, and culturally sensitive across diverse communities worldwide.
Queen Mary, University of London Artificial Intelligence 2023
University of Bedfordshire AI and Robotics 2022
I have graduated with a starred First in History from Cambridge in 2013 and continued to read for an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History winning the Quentin Skinner Prize in 2014. Subsequently, I pursued a PhD under the supervision of Professor Christopher Clark on Roland Freisler, one of the most notorious jurists of the 'Third Reich'.
My academic interest lies with the role of political ideologies in history with a focus on Germany in the 19th and 20th century. In particular, I am intrigued by the interaction of ideas and arguments with the political, social and economic forces of 'real' history. My Bachelor thesis focussed on Ludwig Woltmann, who attempted to fuse neo-Kantianism, Marxism and Darwinism before developing a racialist view of history that became one of the corner stones of national socialist ideology. For my MPhil, I went back to Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Buchholz, examining their differing visions of a future German nation in a post-Napoleonic European order. In particular, I looked at their understanding of reason of state, which served as a bridge between law, philosophy and practical politics.
For my PhD, I wrote a biography of Roland Freisler, who was a state secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice before becoming the president of the so-called 'People's Court' in 1942. Although he is mostly know for his role in persecuting opponents of the regime, his involvement with National Socialism stretches back to the early days of the Weimar Republic when he defended party members in court and became involved in local politics. By examining Freisler's roles as a legal theorist, ideologue, bureaucrat, judge and political activist, I sought to contribute to an intellectual history of the 'Third Reich' whilst shedding new light on the image of Freisler in public memory. I have presented my research at academic conferences as well as the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, the Topography of Terror Berlin, and the NS-Dokumentationszentrum Köln.
I have been a Prize Research Student at the Centre for History and Economics in 2013/14 and received scholarships from the Stiftung der deutschen Wirtschaft, the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) as well as a CHESS Allen, Meek and Reed award from the Cambridge Trust and a Gates Cambridge scholarship. I have also represented Cambridge twice in the annual esports varsity tournament against Oxford. From December 2018 to September 2019, I was a guest researcher (JEV-Stipendiat) at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt.
Since October 2019, I work as a policy advisor on research and education at the Liberal Institute of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in Berlin.
Trinity College, University of Cambridge Political Thought and Intellecutal History 2014
Trinity College, University of Cambridge History 2013
Claire K. Clement writes at the intersection of philosophy, religion, science, and economics. Her interests include what humans will do for meaning after robots take our jobs, and which new religions might emerge from our multicultural ferment. Her current project is the book "Human Believing: God, Science, and Philosophy Across Cultures", which explores the big questions of life with a broad comparative and thematic approach, integrating ideas as wide-ranging as Mormon afterlife, quantum theory, Jedi beliefs, personality types, and the major world religions.
___
Her research at Cambridge focused on the spiritual, economic and social history of the late-medieval English Syon Abbey. (Title: “Processing Piety and the Materiality of Spiritual Mission at Syon Abbey, 1415-1539”). She further pursued her interests in the intersection of social sciences and religion by completing a master’s of urban planning with a focus on economic development, GIS, historic preservation, and women's mobility.
Out of a wide range of interests, I always return to Classical Studies as a unique mirror for better understanding today’s world. After obtaining a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Latin and Greek at Ghent University, Belgium, the Flemish Government granted me funding (a ‘Fayat’ scholarship) to pursue an MPhil in Classics at Cambridge. I am intrigued by late antiquity – a period of lasting religious, political and sociocultural change. In my PhD, I aim to study two late antique authors, a church leader (Gregory of Nazianzus) and a professor of rhetoric (Ausonius of Bordeaux). With the generous help of Gates Cambridge, I hope to understand how these authors presented themselves in relation to the different places where they lived. Studying place, self-presentation, and migration in late antiquity will hopefully help to nuance our understanding of identity, not only in the past but also today.
University of Cambridge Classics 2023
Universiteit Gent (University of Ghent) Linguistics and Literature 2022
Universiteit Gent (University of Ghent) Latin - Greek 2021
Throughout my undergraduate education, my research has focused mainly on experimental 20th-century poetry of the American and Russian traditions. Recently I have examined Language Poetry and Russian Formalism, Ezra Pound and structuralism, and Vladimir Mayakovsky's Bolshevik Futurism. In the American MPhil program I will explore how two modernist American writers' formal innovations were influenced by the British and European cultures they immigrated to, while focusing on their contrary but related approaches to poetic language. This study will compare Ezra Pound's vorticism and "The Cantos" with Gertrude Stein's attention to the autonomous value of the word in "Tender Buttons." My career goals are to enter academia and continue to work to support cross-cultural academic dialogue.
Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) is one of several clean energy technologies that must be deployed globally to minimise the effects of climate change on future generations. However, the CCUS methods currently in use are inefficient and uneconomical due to the difficulty of selectively capturing carbon dioxide from mixtures of gases. I plan on addressing this by investigating the mechanism of action for new electrochemical CCUS systems. Understanding these reactions will mean we can build cheaper, more effective, and longer-lasting CCUS systems. My interest in zero-emissions technology stems from my time working on freight and electric vehicle policy as a public servant in the Australian federal government, which taught me the importance and difficulty of decarbonisation from a technological, economic and political perspective.
My academic research at the Computer Laboratory in Cambridge focused on the application of formal methods for mechanised proof to the domain of computer security generally and privacy and anonymity specifically.
I grew up catching praying mantises and damselflies in rural Kentucky. As an undergraduate at Centre College, I majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; I spent my summers taking care of sick children at the Center for Courageous Kids and doing research in organic chemistry and neuroscience. I matriculated directly to the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and completed my first three years of medical school. I then moved to Janelia Research Campus as a HHMI Medical Research Fellow; there I studied the neural and genetic bases of behavior. As a PhD student in Zoology, I will study adaptive behavior. All animals integrate information about past experience into future decisions; this is the basis of learning and memory. I am proposing to write a specific memory and read the memory trace in the brain. I will use the fruit fly as a model organism. By understanding mechanisms of memory storage, we can begin to investigate changes in memory formation in disease; this may allow us to develop rational therapies for disorders of memory formation, including autism and Alzheimer’s disease. After completing my PhD, I will return to finish my last year of medical school and pursue a career as a child neurologist and neuroscientist, using my lab to better understand the patients I see in clinic.
Centre College