Directory

Hmmm, well I hope I have lots of fun, meet new people and live life to the full!!

After completing my studies in Cambridge (2005), I spent time in Switzerland and London. After working as an oil trader for a major investment bank in London, I returned to North America in 2008. I currently live and work in Houston, TX with my beautiful wife Annie, our 2 young children, Evie and Jonah as well as our dog Malachy.

Having grown up in sunny, dry India I was exposed early on to issues of sustainability due to severe water shortages in my school and the surrounding regions. The capacity of science to systematically develop sustainable and renewable technologies has become apparent to me through my BSc in Physics at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and my MASt in Physics at Cambridge. One of the most exciting areas of development is that of photovoltaics. We have so far been limited in our capacity to harness energy from the sun due to our inability to control sunlight - solar panels require direct sunlight. Harvesting diffuse light - the kind that bounces of buildings and clouds - is in some sense 'forbidden' due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics - diffuse light is 'disordered', and 'ordering' it means we reduce the entropy of the system. I plan to spend my PhD in the optoelectronics group at the Cavendish exploring ways around this limitation - through the use of Luminescent Solar Concentrators and carrier multiplication photophysics. In order to effectively study these systems and tweak their entropy management, I will explore the fundamental processes of thermalisation and localisation. Through my PhD in Physics I will strive to develop an understanding of the fundamental physics of these systems in order to eventually make a pass at efficient harvesting of diffuse light.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Physics 2019
St. Xavier's College, Mumbai Physics 2018

Previous Education

Brown University
Oxford University

I am interested in the historical evolution of modern racial categories, and the current socioeconomic repurcussions of early western encounters with the racial "other." At Cambridge I hope to explore differences in the imagery used to describe nonwhite peoples accross class lines in the late 18th century. This topic appeals to me both historically and as a way of approaching the unhealthy contemporary intersection of race and class status.

My PhD research will focus on objective measurement of physical activity in an adult Cameroonian population. This work is within the broad area of understanding the determinants of adult obesity, diabetes and related metabolic disorders. I intend to focus my career on alleviating the burden of diabetes on the population and the healthcare system through epidemiological research on primordial and primary prevention of diabetes.

Since 2007 I have been developing an interest in and passion for public policy and governance. My undergraduate studies in law and economics in Australia, combined with my work at the Australian youth-run aid & development organisation The Oaktree Foundation, gave me many opportunities to develop these interests. After graduating I spent 15 months as a solicitor at Freehills, a leading Australian commercial law firm, before moving to The Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm that has a strong public sector practice. My hope is that studying the Cambridge MPhil International Relations with the help of the Cambridge Gates Scholarship will continue to equip me with the knowledge and capability to have a substantial impact for the public good through public policy & governance.

I grew up in the city of Mumbai in India where over half the city lives in "slums". As a person of relative privilege in a country where hundreds of millions live below the poverty line, I am motivated to use my career to drive global development

I completed my MPhil & PhD in Social Psychology at Cambridge (2017-21). As part of my PhD, I examined the gender impacts of a successful NGO in India working to empower women with a view to understanding how their work can be scaled (https://www.muktanganedu.org/).

Motivated by the desire to connect knowledge with practice, I now work at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, an impact focussed strategy consulting firm. My role sits within Dalberg's monitoring, evaluation and learning practice, which advises government agencies, international development organisations, foundations, impact investors, corporations and charities on measuring and managing social impact.

I am immensely thankful to the Trust for their support, without which I would not have been a part of Cambridge's rich intellectual heritage. I had many mentors on my way to this scholarship and I am passionate about paying it forward. You can follow my work and get in touch with me on LinkedIN or Twitter: @Saloni_Atal

Previous Education

University of Hong Kong
University of Cambridge

After my PhD, I joined a Nairobi based policy think-tank - African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP), - as a Research Knowledge Translation Scientist, leading a Bill & Melinda Gates funded project to map Maternal-Newborn-Child Health, Family Planning, and HIV/AIDS integration framework across four sub-Sahara African countries, to inform the foundation's policy in these areas. I am also helping the Technical University of Kenya develop a number of graduate courses in the areas of global health and international relations.

Previous Education

Moi University BA Hons
University of Cambridge MPhil International Relations
University of Copenhagen MSc International Health

While officially majoring in economics with a minor in applied mathematics, I completed requirements for a BA in philosophy at Princeton. At Cambridge I wrote my Mphil. thesis on the communicative dimension to blame and holding people morally responsible. I was supervised by Simon Blackburn. I am pursuing a JD at Yale Law School. I intend to ultimately pursue a PhD in philosophy to supplement the JD, exploring the role of responsibility and freedom in both criminal law and moral theory

I am excited to be furthering my studies at Cambridge this year with an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development. My research for my honours thesis involved addressing renewable energy options for the State of Victoria. I explored the potential for Victoria to become carbon neutral by harnessing its natural resources, such as wind and solar energy. I presented a paper on my research at the ISPRS/IGU Joint Conference in Hong Kong, 2010. I undertook a student exchange to Lund University, Sweden, where I witnessed a socially and environmentally effective approach to transport and urbanisation. Prior to coming to Cambridge, I was working as an engineer for VicRoads, where I was involved in major infrastructure development including construction of a major bridge, incorporating road, rail and river networks. I seek to help transform trends in urbanisation and transport through sustainable development. I am eager to commence my studies and become involved in life at Cambridge.

I was born and raised in a village among the beautiful Dolomiti Mountains near the city of Trento, but I studied at the University of Padova where I obtained a BA in Psychology and an MA in Clinical Psychology. During my studies, I developed an interest in difficulties experienced during schooling and in the electrophysiology of mathematical cognition. My PhD research at the Centre for Neuroscience in Education will be at the confluence of these two interests. I will study the characteristics of the physiological reactions of students experiencing high anxiety in relation to mathematics. In particular, I will focus on gender differences and I will assess whether biofeedback techniques can be used to overcome such a difficulty. At university I taught Italian to immigrants through charities, motivated by the firm belief that learning how to speak the local language is the first step that helps in the process of integration.

Links

https://sites.google.com/site/peelenlab
http://www.cne.psychol.cam.ac.uk

Growing up between my American and Sudanese communities ignited my passion for working in international development. I am particularly committed to socio-economic peacebuilding initiatives in Sudan and to shaping post-conflict reintegration pathways for displaced populations globally. Through my previous undergraduate and MPhil research at Cambridge, Oxford, and American University, I investigated women’s experiences of displacement and structural violence in situations of post-conflict rebuilding. With my PhD research I aim to explore the material, affective, and embodied dimensions of displacement as an enduring socio-political condition in order to reimagine our political and economic approaches to displacement. My hands-on experience in international development spans a variety of projects, including addressing housing insecurity and children’s rights in South America, implementing capacity-building programs for youth in Morocco and Palestine, and working with refugee and educational equity organizations in the US and UK.
I am honored to be awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship for a second time and look forward to continuing my work with this change-making community throughout my PhD journey.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge 2025
American University Washington 2023
University of Oxford, Visiting Scholar 2022

As a prospective curator, my work reflects a belief in the museum as a place of empowering representation in spite of its Western-centric foundation. At Stanford University, I helped develop four exhibitions which simultaneously spotlighted non-Western cultural objects and challenged viewers to consider the ethics of collecting practices. I also gained valuable insight as a collections intern for the Cantor Arts Center, educating young audiences through interactive workshops and helping keep the museum up-to-date with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Through Cambridge’s MPhil in Social Anthropology, I aim to develop a specific expertise in digital museum anthropology. My coursework and collaboration with Cambridge’s museums will culminate in my search for methodologies which better protect the visibility of sacred objects and human remains in digital archives. The revolutionary, inclusive museum is birthed upon the international collaboration of people and cultures. To that end, joining the Gates Cambridge community is not only symbolic but necessary to my growth as a museum worker.

Previous Education

Stanford University Art History and Archaeology

As a scholar, my research explored the US and EU's divergent regulatory policies on agricultural biotechnologies and its impact on the trade and regulatory schemes of food scarce regions in Southeast Asia. Prior to Cambridge, I worked in Southeast Asia on rural development projects. I am enormously grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from and become friends with generous, hard-working, and dynamic students from around the world through this scholarship. It's always a pleasure to give back to this community, so please feel free to let me know if I can be of any support to you.

Previous Education

University of Chicago

Links

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/aliya-bagewadi-1a954012

I’m a biologist with a deep affinity for design. Growing up in Zhengzhou and Los Angeles, both cities plagued by smog, I became keenly concerned about climate change and those who suffer its numerous consequences. As a student of biology at Georgetown University, I’ve witnessed unprecedented melting of the Greenlandic Ice Sheet and studied thriving microbial communities in the extreme cold of Antarctica. In this era of climate urgency, I’m convinced that knowledge of biology can help us build diverse, productive, and resilient human habitats. I bring this conviction to Cambridge, where I will study how people interact with bio-designed technologies, architecture, and landscapes in order to understand how designers, architects, and planners can create truly sustainable — and dignified — cities.

Previous Education

Georgetown University Scientiae Baccalaureus Biology 2017