Directory

During my PhD, I investigated how motor areas in the brain respond when we listen to music, even if we stay absolutely still. I also examined how musical training affected neural responses, and how damage to certain motor brain areas affects our perception of musical rhythm.

Links

http://www.jessicagrahn.com
http://linkedin.com/in/jessica-grahn-1978998
http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/jessica.grahn

I am grateful for the opportunity to have studied the no longer extant Computer Speech, Text and Information Technology course at Cambridge, which allowed me to explore the interface between mathematics and language. After finishing the MPhil in CSTIT at Cambridge, I spent a year studying a Masters in Medical Statistics at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and worked for many years with LSHTM and World Health Organization in Global Child Health afterwards. Currently, I have completed a PhD in measuring and evaluating women's empowerment in a complex public health trial in rural Nepal. I am conducting postdoctoral work on gender equality, preventing violence against women, engaging communities in collective action and measuring social norms.

My fascination with the relationship between repatriation and emotion is long-standing but was greatly reinforced by my experience managing the establishment and delivery of restitution initiatives in the Australian university sector. My time as a practitioner prompted me to reconsider the nature, role and impact of non-Indigenous actor emotions on processes of provenance and return: the lingering heartache of setting aside the unprovenanced skeletal remains of a child; the couching of obstructiveness in the language of objectivity; the cautious optimism between researchers and First Nations communities following a handover. By acknowledging and engaging with these emotional registers, I believe that more authentic opportunities for inter-community reconciliation and intra-community empowerment can be identified. With the generous support of Gates Cambridge, I aim to provide practitioners with a nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the emotional dynamics within and between their institutions and the communities they seek to represent.

Previous Education

Australian National University Repatriation: Principles, Poli 2021
Australian National University Archaeological Practice 2020

I will be working towards a MSc in Pathology with Dr. Nick Coleman. My project involves modeling HPV(Human Papillomavirus)-mediated cervical neoplasia. Specifically, I am interested in those cases which are driven by non-integrated (episomal) HPV. This work will prepare me for a career as a professor and research scientist. In this field, I hope to increase our understanding of cancer and inspire young biologists to pursue this intriguing field.

Links

http://www.jimmunol.org/content/186/11/6091

I am a native of South Africa, but was raised in Canada and the United States. My interests in biology, chemistry, and engineering led me to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where I earned a bachelor of science in Chemical Engineering with a focus on Biochemical Engineering. Since completing the MPhil in Advanced Chemical Engineering at Cambridge, I have continued my education at the Yale University School of Medicine where I am pursuing an MD/PhD in the Medical Scientist Training Program. I hope to translate my medical training into a research career that applies my engineering skills to clinically relevant problems.

Links

https://files.nyu.edu/dlg325/public

In the future, I hope to work in development projects for communities in Muslim Africa. As an undergraduate, I studied development primarily from social and humanitarian perspectives, and I hope that the Cambridge MPhil will help me to better understand development from the point of view of economics. After leaving Cambridge, I plan on becoming involved in development efforts through either the private sector or an international aid agency.

At Cambridge I read for an MPhil in Social & Political Sciences, Modern Society and Global Transformations. My dissertation examined how women respond to genetic information and what this suggests about appropriate policy related to genetic testing. Before and after my year as a Gates Scholar, I worked as a reporter -- in Puerto Rico, New York, London, and New England. I wrote regularly for The New York Times and other publications. I spent 2006-7 on a Fulbright Scholarship in London, then later received a JD from Berkeley Law School in California. I currently work as an attorney in New York City at Cooley LLP, where I represent start-up and technology companies, counseling on corporate matters from initial incorporation to exits to IPOs (and many things in between). Please get in touch if you have a new (or not-so-new) company!

I graduated last May from Mount Holyoke College where I majored in physics. I have a deep passion for optoelectronics research and am currently pursuing a MPhil in Physics. A significant amount of research focusing on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with polymer semiconductors has taken place recently. My research focuses on creating more efficient organic LEDs. I am working on both the fabrication of polymer LEDs as well as the testing of such devices using various optical techniques.

(Update: I am now CEO of PetaGene. We tackle challenges in Personalised Medicine, making unwieldy genomic data from sequencers smaller, better and faster, to reduce costs, improve analysis and speed up collaboration.) My PhD research developed models for the physical locality of networks. Locality is fundamentally important for the performance of future computer systems with thousands of processors on a chip, but not much is fundamentally known about it. What is very exciting is that in collaborations with the Brain Mapping Institute, we've also found the theory can explain some mysteries of mammalian neuronal networks and we believe it may help to explain other natural phenomena where physical position matters such as social, epidemic, financial, and traffic networks.

During my time at Cambridge, I researched how populations of corvids (birds in the crow family) respond with learning to human-induced changes in the environment. My current work applies my background in animal learning to help conserve critically endangered species. Specifically, I contribute to conservation breeding and species' translocations programs by helping build evidence-based approaches for recovery. More broadly I am interested in how areas of animal cognition and behaviour can be utilized in conservation contexts, and have been championing the integration of these fields.

I studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Warwick before coming to Cambridge to study for an MPhil in Philosophy. I am interested in political and feminist philosophy. During my master's degree, I have written about climate change duties, social housing and the implications of hate speech for equal citizenship.
My doctoral research engages with the phenomenon of menstrual shame. I offer a philosophical analysis of the connection between gender and shame, and argue that menstrual shaming is a distinct injustice. I also look at the potential of menstrual tracking apps for empowering women.
I am incredibly grateful for the support a Gates Cambridge Scholarship offers me - from the opportunity to conduct research with fantastic academics and peers, to the opportunity to connect with a network of scholars who have years of experience in making the world a better place for everyone.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Philosophy 2020
University of Warwick PPE 2019

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronja-griep

During my undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town, I specialized in Film Studies and History, the former of which is my principal passion, and the latter has been a keen interest since childhood. A key concern guiding my own filmmaking efforts, as well as my own academic research, is the question of how women filmmakers might begin to re-appropriate a technology that has historically excluded them. I am particularly interested in women’s filmmaking, material culture and African history, which I am currently exploring in Masters’ research at the University of Cambridge. In my PhD research, I aim to establish costume and material culture as an effective lens through which to re-evaluate postcolonial cinema and geopolitics, and, furthermore, to combat the marginalization of African women filmmakers in contemporary film studies. My future aspiration is to contribute to a transnational community of film exhibition and curatorship. I am thrilled to be a part of the Gates Cambridge initiative, and hope that my work will encourage unique, creative approaches to cultural studies both within and beyond the Global South.

Previous Education

University of Cape Town
University of Cambridge

I am from Cape Town, South Africa and completed my honours degree in Cell Biology at the University of Cape Town. Looking to apply my molecular biology background in the Biotechnology industry, I decided that the BioScience Enterprise course at Cambridge would provide an excellent practical training at the interface of the science and business worlds. My future plans are to return to South Africa in order to study further and hopefully one day start my own biotech company.