Directory

I did my undergraduate in Chemistry at Oxford where my undergraduate research project focused on developing new proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) techniques for measuring cardiac creatine content in order to better understand heart failure. I am currently working at the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre with Dr. Chris Rodgers developing parallel transmit techniques for ultra-high field (7T) MRIs.

Previous Education

University of Oxford

My research focuses on Calcium signalling, a fundamental process that controls many cellular functions as diverse as contraction, secretion, fertilization, division, development, apoptosis, memory and learning. The Gates Trust offers me not only the funding, but also the chance to meet other highly motivated Gates scholars. I will take advantage of this opportunity to build my skills and network so that I can pursue my goals further.

My PhD research at Cambridge integrated genetic and behavioural studies to address questions related to the function and evolution of song in Neotropical birds. One aim of my research was to understand the function of avian duets, joint acoustic displays between a mated pair of birds. The second aim of my research was to explore the role of learned songs in the process of speciation. The unifying goal is to increase our understanding of the processes that generate and maintain biological diversity, particularly in tropical ecosystems. I am a member of the Yanayacu Natural History Research Group in Ecuador whose aim is to describe the natural histories of little-known tropical species in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of tropical ecology, evolutionary biology, and the diversity of organisms that share our planet.

I graduated with distinction in Chemistry from Delhi University and did my Post graduation in Environmental Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University. At Cambridge, I aim to study whether environmental change was indeed the reason for the collapse of Harappan Civilization by reconstructing the paleoclimatic history of the region. My research at Cambridge should shed light on the nature of the patterns interrelating climate and civilizational activities.

From 2005 - 2007 I studied Computer Science and Engineering at Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. My time in Cambridge, both my research and my experience with Gates, formed part of a trajectory which has led me back to Cambridge for a PhD. I spent the intervening ten years designing, operating, and securing safety-critical industrial control systems. These are the systems one might find controlling temperature in a home, the fuel pump in a car, a defibrillator in a hospital, power converters in a wind farm, or robotic arms in a factory. They are efficient, perform repetitive tasks with precision, and keep people safe; however, as these systems grow in complexity, reliability and security become harder to demonstrate and maintain over the course of the system’s life. My research explores the interface between a control system and its environment, which the system senses and manipulates; how that environment could be used to maliciously modify the control system’s behaviour; and how to design resilient systems which maintain their nominal behaviour in adversarial environments. I hope this work will form part of a foundation to build and maintain trust in these ubiquitous, safety-critical systems, even as they become more attractive targets for malicious activity.

I studied music at McGill University (BMus 2010, concentration piano performance) and Cambridge University (MPhil 2011; PhD 2018). I then supervised undergraduates for one year at the Cambridge Music Faculty, teaching postcolonial studies, ethnomusicology, and sound studies. My PhD thesis focused on the fundamental role of craftsmanship in the formation of gendered institutions in antiquity. My career now bridges the practical and academic. I work alongside the craftsmen and women at the Estonia Piano Factory who preserve endangered traditional skills of hand-crafting the highest quality musical instruments. I also plan to continue part-time academic research and teaching.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge MPhil Ethnomus 2011
McGill University B.Mus (Hons.) 2010

I am a Roman imperial historian with wide-ranging interests in the social, cultural and legal history of Greek and Roman antiquity. My current research focuses on law and legal culture in the Roman provinces, posing broader questions about the development and impact of the Roman Empire.

Previous Education

Harvard University BA in Classics 2005

I am an ambitious, innovative leader and inquisitive scientist, who derives energy from solving problems, while contributing value to society. I have excelled at my education and research by understanding and advancing the performance of emerging photovoltaic technologies. Since graduating from PhD at EPFL, I successfully lunched two new commercial products for advances measurements of solar cells. Currently, I am working as product manager at Sensirion bringing the smart energy transition forward. In my career, I seek to combine my scientific background with entrepreneurial mindset to bridge the gap between research and innovation. Privately, I best like to spend my time actively, surrounded by nature and mountains.

Previous Education

University of London (Imperial College London) BEng Material Science and Engineering 2013

I was born in Paris and completed a BA and MPhil in History of Art at Cambridge. Alongside my academic interests, I served as president of the Cambridge Union, where my proudest achievement was the introduction of half-price memberships for students on bursaries, thus democratising access to the society. After my MPhil, I worked in London for an independent film production company. My PhD proposes to explore how Europeans depicted the peoples of the Pacific in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When the first explorers returned from the Pacific, its inhabitants were represented as exotic and captivating Rousseauian ‘noble savages’. However, those depictions rapidly changed as the growing European Empires strove to assume racial and cultural superiority over them. These images reveal the dramatic shift from wonder at the Pacific and its peoples to disgust and distrust, from the perception of a noble to that of an ignoble ‘savage’, and ultimately from enlightenment to colonialism. I am currently the Vivmar Curatorial Fellow at the National Gallery in London.

Partner and Co-Head of Ventures at Trill Impact. Started own sustaintech company Enval while at Cambridge. Also previously a Strategy Consultant at BCG, Chief Commercial Officer at Resysta International, and Partner at cleantech venture firm WHEB Partners.

Previous Education

Stanford University B.Sc. Biological Sciences, M.Sc. Biological Sciences 1997

I developed a keen interest in researching the interlinkage between anti-racism, Afro-hair aesthetics, and ethnic entrepreneurship as an undergraduate in Political Science and Conflict Resolution at Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia). This nexus was rooted in my lived experience as a Black woman with “kinky” hair. Thanks to further engagement with Afro-hair grassroots organizations, I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the resistance strategies Black women undertake through their hairstyles —an article that was published in a Colombian academic journal. This work serves as the foundation for pursuing my PhD in Latin American Studies at Cambridge. I aim to unveil the extent to which and how entrepreneurial anti-racism might be contesting and reshaping economic dynamics for Black women in the country, crafting different economic narratives and dynamics of local development. Moreover, I did my Master’s degree in Development and Governance at the Universität Duisburg-Essen (Germany) as a DAAD- Helmut Schmidt scholar. My Master’s thesis examined reparation policies and cultural repertoires in Afro-Colombian communities. I have significant working experience in the civil society and corporate sectors in my homeland, Colombia.

Previous Education

Universität Duisburg-Essen Development and Governance 2022
Universidad del Valle Political Science and Conflict 2020

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karengiselt/?locale=en_US

During my undergraduate studies in Cognitive Science at Osnabrück University in Germany I became interested in machine learning and graph theory. I joined professor Henrik Walter’s lab at Charité University in Berlin, Germany, and worked with Dr. Jonathan Clayden at the Developmental Imaging and Biophysics Unit at University College London, UK. I am fascinated by a graph-theoretical approach to the study of whole-brain network organization in health and disease. Psychiatric illnesses, like mood disorders, often impede with our ability to lead independent and self-determined lives. With my research, I aim to contribute to a better understanding of such illnesses in order to develop biomarkers that allow for the effective detection, prediction and discrimination of mood disorders. At Cambridge I will be doing a PhD in Psychiatry, studying trajectories of brain network development, adolescent depressive symptoms and mood disorder. I will combine multimodal MRI metrics of network organization with machine learning tools to identify network phenotypes that are most predictive of subclinical depressive symptoms and depressive disorder.

Previous Education

University of Osnabruck

Born and raised in Pagadian City, Mindanao, my volunteer work with indigenous, urban poor, and rural communities has inspired my academic pursuits. At the University of Toronto, my studies in Anthropology and Public Policy, along with a minor in Contemporary Asian Studies, have provided me with a rigorous and supportive research environment. From my hometown, where I supported the revitalization of culinary traditions, to Newfoundland, where I employed walking methodologies to study the Filipino diaspora, my passion for connecting and engaging with people complements my background in anthropology—a discipline that seeks to make sense of human differences and interrogates what it means to be human. My MPhil in Social Anthropological Research aims to pioneer an anthro-historical inquiry into the North Borneo/Sabah territorial dispute. I hope to explore how competing colonial interpretations of a contract have laid the groundwork for post-war contestations that obscure indigenous understandings of land and water. As a Gates Cambridge scholar, I aspire to contribute to decolonial efforts by analyzing language and power structures and re-centering local communities in discussions about the pressing issues of our time.

Previous Education

University of Toronto Anthropology and Public Policy

Coming from a double background in Mathematics applied to Computer Vision and in Art History, I have always thought that these two disciplines -as they both essentially study images- could thrive from one another. During my PhD at Cambridge, I will study what can be called 'computational formalism': the automatic analysis of images, treated as digital data, through computational methods. Millions of images circulate every day through global networks, and are constantly analysed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) models. More and more, the same AI models are used in Art History and Visual Studies to develop inventive digital methods, helping to study large-scale datasets outside the canon. To question these uses of AI, I will try to determine the place of computational formalism in the historiography of formalism. This methodological work of recontextualisation will lay the ground for a critically-informed use of computational methods in Art History, and will allow us to better understand AI-encoded digital images. In particular, I am convinced that Art History will help us determine the issues of power, domination and invisibilisation at stake behind the circulation of digital images nowadays - this is one of my research goals.

Previous Education

Univ. Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne History of Contemporary Art 2022
Univ. Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Art History and Archeology 2021
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan Math, Vision, Machine Learning 2020

Finding creative, effective ways to reduce inequity and improve wellbeing makes me tick. I was fortunate to explore this passion through the lens of research as an undergraduate psychology student, research assistant, and research coordinator at the University of British Columbia. From investigating the effects of gender stereotyping and stereotype threat on perceived leadership aptitude, to designing a knowledge translation study to improve the health of men who have sex with men, to conducting community-based research to identify innovative methods of end-of-life care, I developed a fascination for the profound impact research could have on individuals, communities, and systems. During my MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology at Cambridge, I examined the differential relationships between domains of gender typicality and psychosocial wellbeing. The aim of my PhD project is to design, deliver, and evaluate psychological interventions to improve gender diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge
University of British Columbia

I believe that the purpose of science is to understand, the purpose of medicine is to cure, and the purpose of engineering is to improve quality of life. I studied biomedical engineering at Purdue University seeking to bring regenerative medicine into widespread clinical practice. My research at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute convinced me that regenerative blood therapies will be the first sub-field to see widespread clinical translation, and I will study such a therapy during my MPhil at Cambridge. Beyond learning the scientific techniques required for the creation of regenerative blood therapies, I also wish to understand the regulatory, economic, and ethical challenges brought about by the approval of such treatments. At Purdue, my developmental biology research, genetic engineering policy work, and efforts in co-founding a nationally-awarded medical device design team led me to take a broad perspective incorporating pragmatic approaches to therapy development, approval, and adoption. I wish for regenerative treatments to reach all those who need them across the globe, and I intend to identify and work through the barriers to this goal, scientific and otherwise. I am honoured and humbled to join the Gates Cambridge community, and I look forward to working with this incredibly diverse group of individuals united in the goal of leading efforts to improve the lives of others.

Previous Education

Purdue University

My research, based on my fieldwork in South Sudan and Poland, is concerned with the study of the developmentalists movements, with a special emphasis on the so-called “emerging donors”. I am specifically interested in the role of individual motivations and personal call for development practice. How do private passions, world visions, and sentiments render and translate into the institutionalized and organized world of the international aid system? What drives people and their organizations to work outside their familiar home setting for distant Others?

Previous Education

Warsaw University MA in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology 2005
Lund University, Sweden MA in Social Anthropology 2003

During my year at Cambridge, I researched the growth of eastern Chinese political control in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, focusing on the demolition of Kashgar’s Old City.