Directory

I grew up surrounded by secondhand books in a variety of small Malaysian towns. During secondary school, I got a scholarship to study in Singapore; which led to a BA in political economy in the U.S. and an MPhil in comparative government in the U.K. After that, I taught English in a high-need secondary school through Teach For Malaysia, seeking classroom experience and a re-immersion in my home country. Besides student epiphanies and classroom silliness, one of the greatest gains from those two years was the realisation that teachers' relationships with their managers are pivotal to their classroom practice, and that such relationships are strained in most Malaysian schools. Hence my PhD project: a comparative study on how to keep teachers accountable without triggering the blame games that damage student outcomes. Through this research, I hope to acquire expertise in education policy. I want to help young Malaysians acquire greater mobility, alongside the wisdom to use that mobility well.

Previous Education

Williams College
University of Oxford

Links

https://riseprogramme.org/people/yue-yi-hwa

Rameen Iftikhar is an education and gender specialist. She has led research and implementation efforts for gender justice through outreach and pedagogy in the Global South. She has pioneered a multimodal approach to gender diversity, violence, and governance in South Asia as the lead investigator of an AHRC-funded grant. She has served as a policy consultant for The Asia Foundation, where she developed a systems reform framework for foundational literacy and numeracy for governments in Southeast Asia. She co-founded Aghaaz, a community-based organisation for at-risk youth in Pakistan, where she designed and implemented programs for vulnerable K-12 students. Drawing from her background in economics, politics, and international development, her doctoral research explores the potential of communities to expand girls’ education and life paths. Her work investigates if the knowledge, skills and resources that young girls gain from education translate into capabilities that allow them to dream of and pursue alternative life paths and envisions communities as key levers of change in these relationships. She graduated as a Fulbright scholar from the University of Pennsylvania with an MSEd in International Education Development program.

Previous Education

Lahore University of Management Sciences Politics & Economics
University of Pennsylvania Int. Educational Development

I grew up in the small city of Aligarh in India and studied at Aligarh Muslim University where I became politically involved in issues of gender equality. I took up Women’s Studies as one of my subsidiary subjects. My interest in the area led me to a Master’s in Gender, Media and Culture at the London School of Economics and Political Science. I then worked as Equality and Diversity Adviser at the London School of Economics and Political Science for five years while also writing about gender and race issues as a freelance journalist for The Guardian, New Statesman, Open Democracy, etc.At Cambridge, my PhD (2015-19) explored gender and class formations in urban India through an ethnography with young lower middle class women employed in services, such as, in shopping malls, cafes, call centres, and offices in Delhi. Following the PhD, I was selected for a Junior Research Fellowship (2019-22) at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, where I developed a new project on gender, digital technology, and the future of work in India. In January 2022, I was appointed Lecturer in Work and Employment Relations at the University of Leeds, where I continue to work.

Previous Education

London School of Economics & Political Science (Un
Aligarh Muslim University

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/asiya-islam/17/462/106
http://twitter.com/asiyaislam

I grew up in legal guardianship with my maternal aunt’s family in a small town in the northwest corner of Tennessee. Eager to learn more about the world outside my tight-knit community, I sought an interdisciplinary education during my undergraduate degree that centered on international politics, language learning, economics, and human rights. I was awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to study abroad in Chile and upon returning delved into education policy and began collaborating with a local literacy nonprofit and the study abroad office at my university. Upon graduation, I travelled to Galicia, Spain, as a Fulbright scholar and have worked here teaching and gaining experience in the classroom since. As a first-generation student, I know firsthand the transformative power that education has in fostering personal and professional growth. At Cambridge, my research will explore how disaggregated data can highlight structural inequities, such as resource gaps and socio-spatial segregation, and inform policy interventions that promote justice and inclusion in education systems. I am deeply honored to become a part of the Gates Cambridge community and am eager to collaborate with other young minds committed to driving global change in their respective fields.

Previous Education

Middle Tennessee State University Global Studies 2020
Middle Tennessee State University Spanish 2020

Links

http://www.linkedin.com/in/brittney-johnson731

From a young age, I was keenly aware that the neat categories that bound and define our sense of belonging--ideas like "home," "nation," and "family"--were much more complex and difficult for some than for others. My experience growing up as a refugee from Bosnia and Herzegovina in Tucson, Arizona, gave me the opportunity to understand how political geography is produced in the everyday, through acts of inclusion and exclusion small and large. When I began my studies at the University of Arizona, I learned that such quotidian experiences were of enormous value to scholars trying to understand how political geographic realities that we take for granted are enacted and reproduced. As an MPhil student in geography at Cambridge, my work has focused on using participatory video to bring out how actually-existing political contestations over urban space and belonging play out among youth in Sarajevo. In my PhD, I hope to continue this engagement in Bosnia and expand it to Istanbul, Turkey, where a set of shared histories and contemporary struggles beckons for research that can think about how young people navigate nationalist politics and everyday material struggles across contexts. My experiences as a Gates scholar have been some of the most enriching in my life, and I am honoured to return to this community.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Geographical Research 2019
University of Arizona Geography and Africana Studies 2018

I was born and raised in Uganda, East Africa. I have a bachelor’s degree in medicine (MBChB) from Makerere university and a master's degree in anaesthesia and critical care. This positions me at the forefront of acute care in hospital emergency departments, operating theatres and the intensive care unit (ICU). Traumatic brain injury is a growing global health problem with a disproportionately higher burden in LMICs like Uganda, majorly affecting young males, resulting in death or disability and leaving the survivors and their families adversely affected. Our setting with limited access to surgery, intensive care, rehabilitative services and a significant health workforce deficiency, efforts to prevent brain trauma must be made. My PhD work is focussed on the economic cost and systems impact of traumatic brain injury in the East African region. This will inform policy, resource allocation and hopefully strengthen efforts to prevent or reduce severity of traumatic brain injuries. Outside my PhD work, I look forward to enjoying the rich history, architecture and cultural diversity in Cambridge and establishing new friendships while there.

Previous Education

Makerere University Medicine
Makerere University Anaesthesia

Neha is the founder of the Humanology Project, a nonprofit organization with the mission to reduce the stigma of mental & neurological illness by democratizing medical literature and providing a forum for patients to share their story. She graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2015 with a degree in Modern Society & Global Transformations. Her research investigates the psychosocial and stigmatizing effects of epilepsy on marriage through ethnographic and quantitative studies. In 2015, Neha was the youngest person on the Healthcare List for Forbes 30 under 30.

So far my student life has been a lot of fun both in and outside the classroom. Parallel to studying on both sides of the Atlantic, I’ve run a vigorous student association, managed a nationwide project on European integration and established a monthly for young people. Thanks to the Gates Scholarship I am able to engage in intensive research on social sacrifices made in extraordinary situations. Pursuing this project in Cambridge's unique multicultural environment is a great adventure.

From a young age, I have always been fascinated by the natural sciences. As an undergraduate in Molecular Biomedicine at the University of Bonn, I developed a strong interest in neuroscience. I have worked on several research projects using the fruit fly Drosophila; studying larval feeding behaviour at Bonn, accumulation of evidence prior to decision-making in larvae at HHMI Janelia Research Campus, and attention in adult flies at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. As a PhD student at Cambridge, I will investigate the neural basis of operant learning in Drosophila larvae. This is the process in which an animal learns about the consequences of its own behaviour, leading to reinforcement or suppression of certain actions. I anticipate that these studies will reveal many of the general principles underlying operant learning. This will hopefully lead to a better understanding of operant learning in vertebrate model systems, facilitating the investigation of related diseases, such as learning disorders, neurodegenerative diseases or obsessive-compulsive disorders, and eventually the development of better cures. After my PhD, I plan to pursue a career in scientific research, investigating the fundamental questions in neuroscience to help us better understand how the brain works. In my spare time, I volunteer as a mentor for high school students with exceptional mathematical talent, and am involved in the organisation of mathematical competitions in Germany.

Previous Education

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn
Fudan University

I work as a pediatric endocrinology fellow at the Medical University of Vienna, where I specialize in providing care for children with differences in sex development and gender-diverse youth. Over the years, I came to appreciate how intricately my field is intertwined with larger sociopolitical and philosophical questions about normativity and bodily autonomy. I also became increasingly aware of the considerable responsibility we have in caring for marginalized young people. This led me to pursue an MPhil in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies at Cambridge, where I learned to apply critical theory to my own practice. My research has since focused on the interplay between gender diversity and health behaviors, and the limitations of medical scientific methodologies in understanding the nuance and agency of gendered embodiment. Expanding on this work, my PhD project aims to apply a more desire-based framework to transgender medical research, troubling the hierarchy between physician-researcher and subject-participant. I'm excited to join the Gates Cambridge scholarship community, whose commitment to improving the lives of others sits at the heart of what I do.

Previous Education

Medical University of Vienna Medicine
University of Cambridge Gender Studies

I am a young geneticist who is ambitious about improving healthcare and stratified medicine. At the age of 16, I attended to United World Colleges of Atlantic, an institute with a mission to use education as a force to unite people, nations and cultures for world peace and sustainable future. While at UWC, academically I became interested in studying disease genetics due to its potential to improve the lives of others. Thus, I studied BSc Human Genetics at UCL, where I developed an interest on the genetic basis of complex diseases. Afterwards, I studied MPhil in Genomic Medicine at Cambridge University as a Gates Scholar. During my master's, I worked at Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute under Prof Zeggini's supervision on two complex disease bioinformatics projects where I worked with large datasets including UKBioBank. For my PhD, I will be studying the rare and low-frequency variants underlying diabetes using data from several biological levels under the supervision of Dr Langenberg. I am very intrigued about this project addressing the knowledge gap in complex disease genomics, given its potential to improve healthcare and stratified medicine. I am very excited to be a part of the influential Gates Cambridge community again.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Genomic Medicine 2018
University College London Human Genetics 2017

Young professional, technologist and entrepreneur passionate about overcoming challenges of global scale and relevance through cutting-edge technologies, effective policy and innovative business models.

Growing up just outside of New Orleans, the urgency of the climate change issue was instilled in me from a very young age. Interacting with some of Louisiana's first climate migrants and experiencing the effects of increased hurricanes and sea level rise pushed me to further pursue climate science. As an undergraduate studying Environmental Earth Science at Tulane University, I discovered a new lens through which the issue could be viewed and learned about the field of paleoclimatology. During my MPhil in the Physical Geography Department at the University of Cambridge, I seek to better understand the fundamental differences in global-scale warming between three interglacial periods. This research will refine scientific understanding of the forcings and feedbacks involved in global-scale warming and will be used in models that will predict the effects of anthropogenically caused climate change. I’m honored and excited to be joining the Gates Cambrdige community and begin working with my peers to tackle one of the biggest issues facing the world today.

Previous Education

Tulane University of Louisiana Environmental Earth Science 2024

I grew up reading Nepal as a "small poor landlocked country" in school textbooks, and as an adult, I have lived to witness the vulnerability of actually living in a developing country. After completing my undergraduate in law (B.A. LL.B.) from Tribhuvan University, I had opportunities to work with law firms and research groups which navigated me with possible directions to contribute to the economic prosperity of the country as a legal practitioner. With my experience of working alongside young entrepreneurs, local businesses, and foreign investors, I learned the prospects of investing capital, utilizing resources, and creating opportunities in development sectors. I aspire to be part of this larger effort to change the fate of the remittance and aid-driven economy of Nepal. At the University of Cambridge, I will study Master of Law with a particular focus on corporate governance, investment law, and international commercial litigation which I will use to fill in the existing gap in commercial legal practice in Nepal and add experience to Nepali university education. It is an immense honor to be a part of the Gates Cambridge community and I hope to make a difference.

Previous Education

Tribhuvan University B.A.LL.B. 2019

Originally from Seoul, South Korea, I completed my undergraduate degree in Linguistics at The University of Edinburgh. I chose to specialise in Experimental Pragmatics out of a long-standing curiosity about how people understand meaning that goes beyond the literal. Even young children are able to pick up on intentions and implied meanings through context, without being formally taught. This intuitive aspect of communication has always fascinated me. At Cambridge, I will explore how Theory of Mind develops in monolingual and bilingual children, using this as a foundation for future research involving neurodiverse children. Through this work, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of pragmatic development and to help improve communication strategies for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Previous Education

The University of Edinburgh Linguistics

My goal is to deliver credible research evidence to influential government, business and community stakeholders, in the right way with the right people and at the right time, achieving positive impact for people and planet.

I lead the Research, Analysis and Modelling team that provides strategic direction on research capabilities at Climateworks. I work closely with program delivery teams to provide independent and objective advice on research practice, and the interpretation and translation of analysis relating to decarbonisation. I also support coordination of staff capacity and professional development of analysts working across Climateworks, and host forums for sharing best practices.

As well as working part-time at Climateworks, I am a parent to three young children.

Previously, I managed the research and engagement activities of the Built to Perform initiative in close collaboration with industry and government. This resulted in a once-in-a-decade reform of building energy regulations, and to my recognition as Young Energy Efficiency Professional of the Year at the 2018 National Energy Efficiency Awards.

I also led Reshaping Infrastructure, which transformed previously fixed mindsets around the influence of physical infrastructure on greenhouse gas emissions and is catalysing policy reforms by governments across Australia. During this time I led the expansion of Climateworks' cities, transport and infrastructure workstream, which included making the strategic and business cases for a new work program and supporting relevant fundraising and recruitment activities.

I led a multidisciplinary team of around a dozen people to deliver the Climateworks Centre Decarbonisation Scenarios 2023, which is now the preeminent evidence base cited by the Australian public and private sectors for setting emissions targets in line with the Paris Agreement.

I hold Bachelor’s degrees in engineering and mathematics from the University of Melbourne and a Master’s degree in sustainable development from the University of Cambridge.

Previous Education

University of Melbourne

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/msli9

I graduated from Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia in 2003 and received my professional licence in 2008. Before coming to Cambridge I worked with the German Archaeological Institute (DAI-KAAK) and the University of California, Berkeley in archaeological expeditions that took me from the Titicaca Basin to the Amazon Forest. Last year I completed an MPhil in Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. In that time I set the groundwork for my PhD research in the Llanos de Moxos, eastern Bolivia, on the development of early complex societies in the Amazon Basin. I hope that my work will help reveal the unknown history of the present indigenous communities and have a positive impact in developing policies for future heritage and forest management. Parallel to my research I work at FFMV, a small non-profit organisation, that aims to support young Bolivian scholars and promote free access to research resources in the fields of Music, Arts and Social Sciences.