Directory

Ntombizodwa is a Ph.D. student at the Pathology Department and Babraham Institute in the laboratory of Adrian Liston and James Dooley. Her project focuses on understanding lung immunity and finding ways to minimize harmful immune responses during a viral infection such as Covid 19 and influenza. She is exploring regulatory T cells as a therapeutic mechanism to control the responses and promote tissue healing. Prior to her Ph.D., she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Medicinal Biochemistry at Arizona State University and an honors degree project on biomarkers for early detection of Human Papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cervical cancers. In the past, she has worked in various academic labs in the United States of America (Biodesign Institute) and the pharmaceutical industry (Novartis). She is also a social entrepreneur working on providing quality education and a supportive system to young African girls through the 100 Young Women Initiative at Shasha Network. She aspires to combine her interests in entrepreneurship and research to maximize the impact on healthcare in the world.

Previous Education

Arizona State University Medicinal Chemistry 2019

As an undergraduate studying Chemistry and Life Sciences in Taiwan, I engaged in a structural biology study about the crystal structure determination of mitochondrial nuclease MGME1. This study revealed the molecular mechanism of MGME1's function in mtDNA maintenance and motivated me to extend my knowledge of structural biology and mitochondrial biology in the Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge. My future research will focus on using Cryo-EM for determining the structure of human mitochondrial ATP/ADP carriers, which play a vital role in cellular energy production. I hope my research can not only uncover the molecular mechanism of mitochondrial functions but also promote mitochondria-targeting drug discovery for the betterment of human health. Besides research, I wish that I could contribute to the scientific education in my hometown, Tainan. I want to facilitate the collaboration between local universities and high schools, making the scientific resources available for any potential and motivated young scientists. I am thrilled to meet all Gates Cambridge Scholars in this fantastic academic community.

Previous Education

National Cheng Kung University Chemistry and Life Sciences 2024

Over the past few years I have worked with and founded educational institutions that provide students with opportunities to engage in hands-on democratic self-governance. As one deeply concerned about the decline of civic participation in developed democracies, these experiences have changed the way I think about political life and the way we prepare young people to take leadership in it. I am passionate about creating new ways to make civic education less rote and more experiential, and I am excited to explore possibilities for this innovation through the MPhil in Politics, Development, and Democratic Education at Cambridge. I hope to draw on this education in my future career: helping schools structurally integrate democratic practices into their administration and pedagogy, creating programs that give young people meaningful governance experience, and empowering students for lives of active civic engagement in their communities and world.

After spending a year teaching at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (http://www.aims.ac.za) I have returned to Cambridge to complete my PhD in theoretical physics. I hope to use my background in physics and education to expand educational opportunities for young people everywhere, especially in the developing world.

Born in Rwanda, my earliest memories are of life as a young refugee. I pursued my undergraduate at North Central College on a generous scholarship from the school's board of trustees. During my masters at Yale, I focused on the events that I left behind: mass atrocities and their consequences. For my PhD, I am looking into the experiences of a vastly marginalised group in the African Great Lakes known as the Batwa. I am interested in how colonial and neo-colonial notions of eugenics have turned them into a de-politicized group, one which has no say on its political, economic and social reality. Beyond academics, I continue to be involved in the education space especially in providing quality education for marginalised communities. To this end, I am a co-founder of the Tujenge Scholars Program, a leadership institute, which has sent Burundi students to prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Carleton, Brown, MIT etc. The goal is that this group of young leaders will be responsible for Africa's transformation.

Previous Education

Yale University African Studies 2015
North Central College Political Science 2013

A recent graduate in Political Science and Comparative Human Development, along with a minor in Creative Writing, I am deeply committed to improving education in my native Pakistan. Specifically, the goal is curbing Muslim extremism, and empowering young people with their native identity and values. Since I was thirteen, I have been involved with progressive Islamic schooling. A new type of schooling, it aims to combine secular education with Islamic values to develop ‘well-rounded’ Muslims that abstain from militant extremism. The MPhil in Educational Leadership and School Improvement program at Cambridge, followed by an M.Ed. from Harvard University, will instruct me in various leadership techniques and how they may be adapted to progressive Islamic schools. With this training, I will work at a secondary school and the government in Pakistan. The Gates-Cambridge Scholarship is a lifelong gift, and I hope that I will be able to collaborate with this community wherever I go.

From a young age, I expressed a keen interest in the issues surrounding infectious diseases and global epidemics. As a Biomedical Engineering student at Arizona State University, my interest in epidemiology and its engineering applications were further developed and contextualized by an additional minor in Global Health and a research internship at the Translational Genomics Research Institute. During the course of my PhD in Chemical Engineering at Cambridge, I aspire to develop novel diagnostics for C. difficile, the deadliest superbug in the United States, and C. perfringens, the second leading cause of food poisoning. With C. difficile, there is a direct correlation between mortality and the timing and choice of initial treatment. With the invention of an immediate diagnostic that detects the level of infection, mortality rates may be reduced across global communities.I seek to be a leader in the worldwide pursuit to alleviate the burden of disease on developing populations by delivering technologies that are simple, inexpensive, and—above all else—feasible in their applicable environments. I am grateful to be joining the Gates Cambridge Community and for the opportunity to network with some of the greatest intellects of our generation with the united goal of improving the human condition.

Previous Education

Arizona State University BS in Engineering Biomedical Engineering 2019

I grew up in North Carolina and London, determined from a young age to disallow what I saw as unjust, particularly when it befell my childhood peers. This innate desire kindled in me a dedication to equitable education and mental health care. Earning my BA in psychology at Colgate University, with minors in education and creative writing, I seized opportunities to work directly with youth, an ardent believer in the importance of meeting children where they are and understanding their diverse needs as they learn to exert agency in response to the complexities of the ever-agitated world. I conducted research in the US, UK, Ghana, Samoa, and among several refugee communities, driven by increasing rates of mental illness and decreasing age of onset — both exacerbated by the global pandemic. After graduation, I joined the Center for Autism Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. My PhD, a coalescence of my experiences, will focus on effectively supporting youth at the community level and within contexts of demographics, neurodiversity, and personal/political disruption. Understanding which interventions are beneficial long-term for children with internalising difficulties will enable individualised optimisation of care.

Previous Education

Colgate University Psychology 2021

I was born and raised in Rwanda, and when I was 14 years old my family was killed during the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis of 1994. Although I was too young to understand its roots, this tragedy would forever shatter my life and shape the person I would become. I graduated from Rwanda’s first School of Journalism and I hold a Master’s in Journalism from Carleton University. I have worked as a journalist in Canada’s major news organizations. I am currently completing a Master’s in International Development Studies from Dalhousie University and have previously worked as an international development worker in Rwanda. At Cambridge, I will be researching further the dynamics of peacebuilding in the context of post-conflict countries in the Great Lakes of Africa, by investigating ways through which international organizations navigate the normative crosscurrents that come with peacebuilding. Centered around the issues of democratization and democratic recognition, this research seeks to explore how international actors respond to post-conflict countries when they express a strong wish to articulate the agenda, the levers they have as well as ways in which they use them. Ultimately, I seek to contribute my perspectives as an African scholar to a better understanding of peacebuilding on the continent and in the world.

Previous Education

Carleton University
Université Nationale du Rwanda
Dalhousie University

I developed a passion for infectious disease research whilst undertaking my BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Nairobi. Upon graduating in 2013, I did an internship at the KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme alongside the malaria immunology group. I later joined the US Army Medical Research Unit where I did another internship with the influenza surveillance group. In July 2015, I was offered a Commonwealth Scholarship by DFID to pursue an MSc in International Health & Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford. Consequently, I worked with the malaria vaccine research group at the Jenner Institute for my thesis project. During my MSc, I founded the STEMing Africa Initiative ( https://stemingafricainitiative.wordpress.com/ ) to advocate for the active inclusion of women in STEM by supporting talented female graduates in STEM to secure scholarships for advanced degrees at leading universities worldwide. The modest awards from the Western Union, UNESCO, the Forum for African Women Educationalists, and the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) helped me to spearhead this program. I also got an opportunity to enhance my leadership skills whilst participating as a fellow in the 2018 Mandela Washington Fellowship, a flagship program started by former president Barack Obama to connect young African leaders with leaders from the United States. For my Ph.D., I applied machine learning to model the distribution and determinants of anthrax disease risk across Uganda and Kenya. My work will accelerate anthrax disease elimination by providing guidance for targeted disease prevention and surveillance.

Previous Education

University Of Nairobi
University of Oxford

As ethnically Aromanian poet I am interested in the "personal" and the "social" in poetry, what Carolyn Forché called "poetry of witness". This shaped my work as English lecturer as well as creative writing programme director and workshop facilitator with youth in diverse learning settings. When my poetry pamphlet "Omaynina" earned the national award "Lesnovski Dzvona", I co-founded the literary magazine "Sh". I felt I was thrown into the Macedonian literary scene with the joy and caution of a child jumping on a trampoline. Doing journalism, educational projects for the NGO "Izlez", I was awarded a scholarship for a Balkan ethnic tensions seminar, Sarajevo. During the MPhil project I explored readers' aesthetic and cultural responses to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and the role of literature in social justice. Expanding my knowledge in the field of the arts practices in the criminal justice system, for my PhD I am working on the arts-based design, delivery and evaluation of a new participatory Spoken Word Poetry Programme (SWPP) for self-development through creative engagement and performance together with young people, the staff and artists/educators in a Macedonian prison.

During my undergraduate studies in biomedical sciences at University College London, I was first introduced to the brain’s immune cell, microglia, where I learnt about the multifaceted nature of these cells in the physiological and pathological condition. Fascinated by the interactions that occur between the brain and the immune system, I went onto researching into the role of peripheral B lymphocytes in Parkinson’s disease for my master’s project at Cambridge university. Since graduating, I have worked as a business development manager at a neuroscience-focused biotech company, working with leading CNS pharmaceutical and biotech companies. This has allowed me to appreciate the enormous gaps that exist in our knowledge in neurodegenerative diseases and has, in turn, brought me back into research. Coming back to the academia and specifically Cambridge university as a PhD student, I plan to research into the relationship between mitochondrial dysfunction and inflammation to understand disease mechanisms underlying Parkinson’s disease. It is a great honour to be able to join the Gates Cambridge community, which I believe will enormously enhance both my PhD and Cambridge experience.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Translational Biomed Research 2019
University College London Biomedical Science 2018

From a young age, my mother taught me the importance of exercising the right to vote. Years later, as a volunteer on Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, I saw the challenges of voting firsthand: confusing registration forms, long lines, and malfunctioning voting machines, among others. I studied election reform efforts as a Political Science major at Stanford University and continued to focus on issues of civic engagement and political participation through positions at The White House Office of Public Engagement and on the 2012 Obama campaign. I completed an MPhil in Public Policy at Cambridge as a 2014 Gates Scholar, which deepened my understanding of policymaking and allowed me to explore the intersection of government, technology and public policy. I am currently drawing on these skills in my new role at the American Civil Liberties Union, and I will be continuing my education later this year as I enroll at Yale Law School.

This year at the University of Cambridge, I will be receiving an MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Claire Hughes. During my time in Cambridge I will be working on Dr. Hughes' "Toddlers and Up" project, a longitudinal study that examines young children's learning profiles. By looking at young children with high levels of inhibition and social anxiety, I hope to compare their performance on executive function tasks to their more outgoing peers.

I am a trauma therapist and researcher from Toronto, Canada, committed to improving mental health care for underserved and vulnerable populations. I have supported individuals navigating some of the most painful and complex chapters of their lives, including those affected by trauma, loss, and adversity. I hold an MSc in Clinical Psychology from Leiden University, and at Cambridge, my PhD research will focus on developing and evaluating a trauma intervention for very young children with PTSD—a population for whom no clinical guidelines currently exist. By creating scalable, evidence-based treatments, my work aims to close a critical gap in early childhood mental health and make effective care more globally accessible. I believe research can be a force for healing, equity, and systemic change, and I am honoured to join the Gates Cambridge community of scholars working to improve lives through inquiry, compassion, and service.

Previous Education

York University Psychology
Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (Leiden Univ) Psychology

I completed my MPhil in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies at the Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies in 2015/16. My research focused on the ways young women use online technologies to engage in feminist thought and action and explored how these online practices are affecting feminist political progress.

I now work in Australia as Senior Social Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister, the Hon Anthony Albanese MP.

Prior to coming to Cambridge I worked as a Social Policy Advisor at the Australian Treasury, specialising in schools policy, early childhood education and care and parental leave policy.

Previously I worked as research manager for the global food and water security program run at Australian public policy think tank Future Directions International.

Previous Education

University of Western Australia