Directory

Growing up in eastern Kentucky, in the heart of the Appalachian region of the United States, I was fascinated by questions of meaning in life and devastated by the hardship I witnessed at home and abroad. Education has been my ticket to exploring these two themes: meaning and inequity. With generous support through the Brown Fellows Program, I immersed myself in the liberal arts and sciences at Centre College, studying neuroscience and mathematics as well as philosophy and religion. I lived as a monastic for a summer in a Buddhist monastery in Taiwan, investigated crime scenes and defended the underserved in Washington, DC, and carried out a final-year thesis on spiritual memoirs and autobiographies. After examining the association between the immune system and mental illness through the MPhil in Epidemiology at Cambridge, I joined research teams at Dartmouth College, where we have explored self-regulation as a mechanism of behaviour change and conducted policy-focused research on the US opioid crisis. During my PhD I will address a critical question: Given similar histories of adversity, why do some children do better than others? Studying resilience may help us improve well-being and could lead toward greater health and educational equity. I look forward to working with others in the Gates Cambridge community as we explore fundamental life questions and help others thrive.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Master of Philosophy Epidemiology 2015
Centre College Bachelor of Science Behavioral Neuroscience 2014

Links

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-tyJuPAAAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenmetcalf

I completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Applied Statistics at the Australian National University. After graduating, I worked at PwC in Australia, whilst qualifying as an actuary. My work and studies focus on financial risk management in relation to retirement incomes, health insurance and aged care, employee benefits and welfare.

During my year as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, I completed my MPhil in Biological Sciences studying the nuclear envelope proteins of Trypanosoma brucei, the parasite which causes "African Sleeping Sickness." After completing this research, I turned from the bench towards the clinic and completed my MD at UCSF School of Medicine with focuses on infectious disease, social justice, drug addiction, point-of-care ultrasound and medical education.

Focusing on the late medieval period, my research investigates the intersection between economic and political structures of control and the workings of imagination. I am interested not just in what we think, but how we are able to think. I completed my MA at Monash University, an Australian university with particular strengths in medieval and early modern studies. Having myself come to university via Open Learning and a community-based adult learning centre, I am passionate about ensuring that people overcoming disadvantage of all kinds have access to education. This year, it was my great delight to co-direct the inaugural Australian Youth Humanities Forum, an initiative which aims to combat perceptions that non-vocational degrees like Arts only offer viable career options to the privileged. A key aim of my time at Cambridge is to develop better ways of sharing the excitement and potential of research in the humanities with the broader community.

As a Gates Scholar, I received my MPhil in Criminological Research in 2011 from the University of Cambridge. In 2015, I received my Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania.

I am currently an assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. My research examines biological risk factors for antisocial behavior, aggression, and psychopathy. My primary focus is on psychophysiological, nutritional, and hormonal risk factors for antisocial behavior.

While most criminological research is either social or biological, my work contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the development of delinquency that takes into account factors across multiple levels of measurement. This research will help practitioners to develop more effective crime prevention strategies that address multiple risk domains.

As a Gates Scholar, I studied for a PhD in the department of Chemistry in the laboratory of Professor Michele Vendruscolo, where I worked on developing computational methods to determine protein structures and conformational ensembles that describe the motions of dynamic proteins. These techniques were utilized investigate the processes of protein folding and misfolding.

After my studies at Cambridge I worked as an NSF postdoctoral in the laboratory of Professor Arthur G. Palmer III at Columbia University, where I studied the role of conformational dynamics in protein function with NMR spectroscopy and molecular simulations.

I then worked as a scientist at D.E. Shaw Research, where I developed new physical models that have enabled the accurate simulation of intrinsically disordered proteins.

As an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Computational Molecular Science at Dartmouth College, my group utilizes molecular simulations to obtain atomistic descriptions of the molecular recognition mechanisms of intrinsically disordered proteins. We aim to use insights form these simulations to understand, predict and ultimately design dynamic and heterogeneous binding interactions of disordered proteins, with a goal of developing new avenues to therapeutic interventions in diseases associated with disordered protein dysfunction through the rational design of biologic and small molecule inhibitors.

Previous Education

Pomona College BA Chemistry 2006

Experiences with the lived effects of psychiatric and neurodegenerative illnesses have largely shaped my curiosity to understand the intricacies of the human brain and aspiration to help those who suffer from insults to its fragility. As an undergraduate student at McGill University majoring in Neuroscience, I became involved in research ranging from brain plasticity, to Alzheimer’s disease, to computational genetics, to factors influencing the etiology of schizophrenia. Particularly, I developed an interest in using computational tools to characterize and quantify alterations in brain anatomy related to different disorders of the brain. At Cambridge, I will pursue a PhD in Psychiatry, with a focus on using a multimodal approach combining brain structural and functional data and cognitive measures to explore the neural mechanisms for the manifestation of hallucinations in schizophrenia. An understanding of the phenomenon of hallucinations has far-reaching implications for treatment strategies, commonalities between disorders, and insights into the nature of consciousness. Due to the inseparable integration of clinical observations and scientific questions, I ultimately hope to complete a medical degree after my PhD, with the overarching goal of translating neuroimaging findings into clinical practice. Academics aside, I practice acroyoga, rock climbing, and figure drawing. I’m humbled and excited to join this diverse community of scholars.

Previous Education

McGill University

I currently live and work in Seattle, Washington, USA. For more information please see my LinkedIn page.

Previous Education

Pomona College

Early in my medical training I developed a keen interest in endocrinology and particularly endocrine disorders in pregnancy. These disorders have far-reaching biopsychosocial effects and interventions can improve the lives of women and their children. My PhD will examine whether the “artificial pancreas” can improve glucose control and clinical outcomes in pregnant women with Type 1 diabetes in real-life at home trials. I am also a passionate advocate of sexual and reproductive health and rights, and am currently a Director of Family Planning Victoria and the Australian Youth Representative and a Regional Council Member for the International Planned Parenthood Federation. In the future, I hope to be a clinician-researcher with an active role in policy and advocacy to help on practical and empirical levels to improve the lives of women and their families.

Growing up in a family that struggled to afford the costs of managing chronic health issues, I realised that poor health and other difficult life experiences often are intertwined. At Pomona College, I studied biochemistry and began to wonder about the biochemical underpinnings of the social determinants of health, which drive global health disparities. My passion for biochemistry grew over four years in the Sazinsky lab, where I discovered the structure of an enzyme that could make better nutrition available to many more people. In other work with Dr. Calderón-Villarreal of COLEF in Tijuana, Mexico, I combined chemical and anthropological approaches to reveal the socio-environmental determinants of poor health in a population experiencing homelessness. As a PhD student in the Reik and Balasubramanian labs, I focus on the molecular processes that control which genes are turned on (or off) to regulate development because adverse life circumstances (e.g., poverty, poor nutrition, and violence) often dysregulate these very processes to cause chronic disease. I am honoured to join the Gates Cambridge community of scholars in their efforts to bend the arc of academic research toward social justice.

Previous Education

Pomona College Chemistry 2020

I completed my PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, working on a potential biomarker of mitochondrial dysfunction relevant to Parkinson's Disease. I now work in drug discovery research, utilising my mitochondrial biology and ubiquitin-related skills in early-stage target discovery and validation in neurodegenerative disease.