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Sara Jane Renfroe
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 PhD Social Anthropology
- Wolfson College
Sara Jane Renfroe
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 PhD Social Anthropology
- Wolfson College
I am from a small, Gulf-side town in northwest Florida, raised by a family of pecan farmers-turned-healthworkers. An early fascination with how people care for one another under hardship, and how stories cultivate empathy, drew me toward anthropology and applied research. During my undergraduate studies, I became deeply involved in immigrant rights movements and focused my research on the experiences of undocumented Latina migrant women navigating exclusionary systems through collective care and advocacy. I then pursued an MA in Human Rights Studies to strengthen my understanding of legal frameworks of rights and justice. This training informed my subsequent career in refugee resettlement and, later, in gender equity and global health within international development. As I begin my PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, I aim to advance participatory, decolonialist research that bridges scholarship and practice through exploring how women living at the margins of formal health systems build knowledge, care, and agency in contexts of legal and social precarity. I am endlessly grateful to the Gates Cambridge Trust for the opportunity to pursue this work within a community committed to leadership and equity.
Previous Education
Columbia University Human Rights Studies 2020
Rollins College Anthropology 2018
Duncan Ritchie
- Scholar-elect
- United States, United Kingdom
- 2026 PhD Engineering
- Churchill College
Duncan Ritchie
- Scholar-elect
- United States, United Kingdom
- 2026 PhD Engineering
- Churchill College
Born and raised in Berkeley, I am a Materials Science and Engineering student at the University of California, Berkeley, where I study how material structure and mechanics govern performance, durability, and failure. The beauty of this discipline lies in the intersection of rigorous scientific inquiry paired with societal engineering impact, which is exactly where my interests lie. At Cambridge, I will pursue a PhD in Engineering focused on experimental mechanics and materials testing, with the goal of developing testing approaches that better connect fundamental behavior to real-world performance. I am motivated by research that bridges discovery and application, and I hope to translate materials insight into technologies that improve reliability and sustainability. I am excited to join the Gates Cambridge community and its commitment to using scholarship for positive global impact.
Previous Education
University of California, Berkeley Materials Science+Engineering 2026
Anna Rullan Buxo
- Scholar-elect
- United States, Spain
- 2026 PhD Chemistry
- Darwin College
Anna Rullan Buxo
- Scholar-elect
- United States, Spain
- 2026 PhD Chemistry
- Darwin College
As an undergraduate studying Chemistry at Yale University, I developed an interest in spectroscopic analyses of reaction mechanisms, particularly for reactions that relate to the environment and sustainability. After spending four years working as a teacher— as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in South Korea and a mathematics teacher in my hometown of San Juan, Puerto Rico— I am excited to pursue a PhD in Chemistry at Cambridge. I look forward to researching iron additive effects on the efficiency of Vanadium Flow Batteries (VFBs), and finding new, sustainable ways to store energy at a large scale. VFBs provide easily scalable energy storage, all while decoupling power and energy production. By utilizing in-line NMR and EPR to analyze the mechanisms by which iron additives stabilize Vanadium cations at high temperatures, we can make VFBs a viable alternative for large-scale renewable energy storage. With this research, I hope to contribute to making renewable energy more accessible to the public and solving the climate crisis.
Previous Education
Yale University Chemistry 2022
Larom Segev
- Scholar-elect
- United States, Israel
- 2026 PhD Physics
- Corpus Christi College
Larom Segev
- Scholar-elect
- United States, Israel
- 2026 PhD Physics
- Corpus Christi College
Fascinated by the big questions of the universe’s earliest moments, evolution, and composition, I studied Astrophysics and Applied Physics at Harvard University. Working on commissioning observatories across wavelengths, I became interested in innovative telescope and experiment designs. Continuing this research, I seek to advance the frontier of our technological capabilities and unlock new physical understanding. I hope to explore one of the great unknowns: the Cosmic Dark Ages before the first stars formed, when the universe was filled with cold, neutral hydrogen. This era left behind a record of the cosmos' first light in the form of an extraordinarily faint radio signal. Detecting it is challenging, as it is overwhelmed by foreground emission from our galaxy, distorted by Earth’s atmosphere, and further obstructed by human-made interference. My Physics PhD at Cavendish Laboratory will focus on developing the instrumentation and analysis methods for a mission going to the far side of the Moon to detect this primordial signal and revolutionize what we know about our cosmic origins.
Previous Education
Harvard University Astrophysics & Applied Physics 2026
Prithi Srinivasan
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 PhD Biological Science at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
- Trinity College
Prithi Srinivasan
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 PhD Biological Science at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
- Trinity College
I grew up in the Bay Area in California, and pursued my undergraduate studies in Cell & Molecular Biology and Chemistry at the University of Chicago. It was there that I was introduced to the complex choreography of intracellular trafficking, studying the mechanisms by which cargo are recognized, sorted, and released during nuclear import. Building on this foundation, I am excited to be pursuing a PhD in Dr. Simon Bullock’s Lab at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, to address fundamental questions about how the transport of RNA cargo is spatiotemporally regulated in cells. This work will not only improve our understanding of the processes guiding cellular organization and specification, but will offer insights into the basis of neurodegenerative disease and mechanisms of viral infection. I am incredibly honored to be joining the Gates Cambridge community, a community defined by intensely creative and inquisitive minds. I am eager to work with fellow scholars across disciplines to increase collaboration and broaden accessibility in academic spaces.
Previous Education
University of Chicago Molecular Biology and Chemistry 2026
Dylan Tedder
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 PhD Zoology
- St John's College
Dylan Tedder
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 PhD Zoology
- St John's College
My childhood was spent watching spiders weave webs and scrabbling after cockroaches. My passion for insect behavior became my career when I studied Drosophila reproduction in the Masly lab at the University of Oklahoma. There I developed an interest in genomic influences in insect behavior. I am drawn to complex questions that require big data and pangenomic analysis to answer, which led me to pursue a master’s in bioinformatics from the University of Oregon. During my PhD in Zoology, I will study the domestication of black soldier flies (BSF), with a focus on behavioral differences across the pangenome. BSF are a key species in entomophagy and bioconversion efforts, which are important aspects of building a more sustainable future. In addition to my interest in environmental sustainability, I believe in improving access to education for all people. I want to work with museums and outreach initiatives to promote greater scientific literacy in the public. I also plan to work with mentorship and scholarship programs to lower the barriers to education for disenfranchised groups. Promoting the great minds among us, no matter where they come from, and encouraging all people to protect the environment we live in.
Previous Education
University of Oregon Biology 2024
University of Oklahoma Biology, Psychology Minor 2019
Cassandra Vega
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 MPhil Education (KPP)
- Darwin College
Cassandra Vega
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 MPhil Education (KPP)
- Darwin College
Born and raised in New Jersey, one of the most educationally segregated states in the U.S., I witnessed firsthand the impact of systemic inequities. The quality of one’s education is a key factor in social mobility, community cohesion, and the health of democracy, and yet it is largely and unjustly determined by geography. In the age of social media, people have been able to circumvent this limitation with unprecedented access to information, particularly benefitting marginalized communities whose stories and histories continue to be rewritten or suppressed. Throughout my time across federal, state, and city government, nonprofits, and academia, it has also become clear that this new reality has intensified political polarization, accelerated the spread of misinformation, and fueled a growing culture of anti-intellectualism. Through the MPhil in Education (Knowledge, Power and Politics) at the University of Cambridge, I aim to understand how we can leverage different education systems to build a politically informed public capable of holding institutions accountable and advancing a more empathetic and equitable society.
Previous Education
Rutgers University Political Science 2024
Lea Wang
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 MPhil History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine
- Trinity College
Lea Wang
- Scholar-elect
- United States
- 2026 MPhil History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine
- Trinity College
I was born and raised in Holland, Pennsylvania, and am completing B.A. degrees in Social Studies and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. My academic interests span politics, science and technology studies, and histories of the environment and economy. At Harvard, my work has examined disaster insurance and the political economy of climate reparations. As a Gates-Cambridge scholar, I will pursue an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, focusing in particular on the role of climate models in adjudicating questions of legal responsibility for climate change. By examining the intersections of technology and politics, I seek to articulate our obligations to one another—especially in confronting the epochal challenges of climate change. I am honored to join an engaged community of scholars committed to advancing public scholarship where it is needed most.
Previous Education
Harvard University Social Studies, Applied Math 2026
