Directory

I was born in Mongolia, a country that is the most sparsely populated and has the coldest capital in the world. I studied Environmental Economics and later Environmental Policy at Whitman College and Yale University, respectively. During my years of study, I was fascinated by how the valuation of environmental services can be used as a powerful tool to influence policies. More recently, I managed a market-based conservation project called the Sustainable Cashmere Project while at the Wildlife Conservation Society Mongolia program. As an MPhil in Conservation Leadership candidate, I am very interested in further exploring ways to incorporate sustainable practices and standards into supply chains. I believe that forging strong relations with committed industries is one of the key solutions to expanding the impact and influence of conservation principles around the world. I am also passionate about further supporting young environmentalists, which will build on the Environmental Fellowship Program that I initiated while working for the Zorig Foundation. I hope to see Mongolian conservationists play a more critical leadership role nationally by pushing to incorporate climate change sensitive policies, and globally by increasing our collaboration with other countries. As a Gates Cambridge Scholar, I am very excited to be a part of a dynamic network of bright minds around the world that can cross-fertilize a rich array of ideas and experiences on innovative and pressing topics.

Previous Education

Yale University Environmental Policy 2013
Whitman College Environmental Economics 2009

I’ve always lost myself in stories, sci-fi narratives, fantasy quests, tales of faraway places. Growing up, I became increasingly fascinated by stories of the past. How objects and traces can be brought together, giving a glimpse into the lives of those who came before. After earning an Anthropology BA from American University, I pursued a career as an educator, researcher, and project manager at the Smithsonian NMNH. My work involved developing content to highlight key concepts within exhibits and fostering understanding around culturally significant topics. Witnessing the power of museums as spaces for reconciliation, education, and care inspired me to undertake an MPhil at Cambridge, where I investigated ethnographic collections that may lack context. My proposed PhD seeks to build deeper connections with 'ordinary' objects in museum collections and establish best practices based on the needs of stakeholding communities worldwide. These everyday items weave us into the tapestry of life, linking people with their ancestors and fostering shared connections across time and cultures. Our past informs our present and future; I hope that by harnessing this potential, we can create a more empathetic and inclusive museum system.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Archaeological Research 2022
American University Washington Archaeology 2017

As a second-generation Algerian raised in the Parisian banlieue (93), I grew up attuned to the silence surrounding Algeria’s colonial past. To break this silence and uncover the buried stories of French colonisation, I turned to postcolonial studies. In 2020, I began freelancing as a journalist, writing on Algerian history, decolonial theory, and migration in France.I attended a Classe Préparatoire littéraire for my undergraduate studies before reading English at Sorbonne University. During my MPhil at the University of Cambridge, my research focused on epistemic injustice in harki narratives, literary cannibalism, and the symbolism of desert and mountain landscapes in Algerian literature. For my PhD, I will investigate the poetics and politics of the "fugitive voice" in contemporary Algerian writing, examining Francophonie not as a colonial command but as a space of aural resistance.Situated at the intersection of literature, critical theory, and history, my research adopts a decolonial approach to cultural studies, one that aims to foster civic discourse and community engagement. I look forward to joining the 2025 Gates cohort.

Previous Education

Université de Paris Sorbonne - Paris IV History
Université de Paris Sorbonne - Paris IV English Studies
University of Cambridge Literature, Culture, Thought

I am pursuing an MPhil in African Studies. My areas of interest include: black transnationalism, political protest, and youth identity.

My research in the field of Supramolecular Chemistry - the study of how molecules interact, recognise one another, and organise themselves into well-defined functional assemblies. Studying in Cambridge gave me a wonderful opportunity to live and work with talented and ambitious people form all over the world. I now lead a research group in the Chemistry Department at the Technical University of Denmark.

Previous Education

University of New South Wales B.Sc Chemistry (Honours) 2005

Having grown up in India and the UK, and living in different parts of the world to seek knowledge in subjects from the theoretical and practical sciences, with teachers in the Western and Islamic scholarly traditions, my current doctoral research project is concerned with exploring the constitution of 'ilm and an 'aalim, focusing particularly on bodies and language.

As an undergraduate at North Carolina State University, I began to appreciate the pragmatic perspective and mathematical methods of research in biomedical engineering, and I sought to apply this empirical approach to medicine. This lead me to pursue an MD-PhD dual-degree with the University of North Carolina in hopes of leading medical researchers in facilitating the translation of new treatments and technologies into the clinic. I am particularly interested in studying neurophysiology through computational modeling, specifically with regard to neuroplasticity in both a single neuron as well as across neuronal circuits. Gaining a basic mechanistic understanding of neuronal regulation has great implications for understanding and treating various neurological disorders and pathologies. The ideal solution to any illness, especially neurodegenerative diseases, involves input from all applicable fields, including basic science, clinical science, epidemiology, sociology, and psychology, among others. The Gates Cambridge community promotes collaboration across this wide range of disciplines, and I hope to apply my engineering background and clinical experiences to my graduate work and many future projects. With careful consideration of all these viewpoints, we can achieve our ultimate goal of providing the best possible patient care.

Previous Education

North Carolina State University
The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

My doctoral research examined a method of advancing social justice that has gained traction in both philosophy and activism: advancing social justice by changing language. For instance by banning derogatory terms, changing word-meanings, or coming up with new terminology. In my dissertation, “Corruptible Words: Essays on Social Progress and Linguistic Change”, I caution against efforts to change language before changing social practices. My thesis draws from a “use-theory of meaning”, according to which the meanings of our words come not from how they are defined or what they refer to, but from how they are used by a linguistic community. “Sorry” although defined as an apology-expressing term, is used in ways that go beyond its definition. In English, it is also used to ask people to move aside when they are in the way, or to express remorse (“I’m sorry that happened to you”). Stable patterns of use take the form of unwritten rules which encode the culture and practice of a community into language. Such rules arise as a result of our local practices and beliefs (our “forms of life”). These practices and beliefs give rise to certain “expressive needs”, needs to use words to navigate them. Applying this view of meaning to the suggestion that we need to change language to advance social justice, the following question arises: What happens if you take problematic words away, by tabooing them, for instance, while the practices that gave rise to them remain unchanged? My doctoral research argued that generating strong linguistic norms, norms which dictate how words can or cannot be used, without changing social practices and beliefs, runs a strong risk of driving a community’s expressive needs elsewhere, risking the concealment of problematic practices and beliefs. In response, my doctoral research has developed a novel account of the role language can play in advancing social change. By identifying patterns of word-use and investigating the practices and beliefs which give rise to these uses, words become a rich resource of information. Words mark where and how, in our social practices and beliefs, reform is required. Language, my doctoral research argues, is not a shortcut to social change, but an important source of information.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Philosophy 2021
University of Amsterdam Philosophy 2020

I'm the Founder and General Partner of Air Street Capital, a venture capital firm investing in AI-first technology and life science companies.

Computer-aided drug discovery is - potentially - able to shorten the development phase of new drugs and at the same time it reduces the number of animals used for experiments. Being on the borderline between computer algorithms and chemistry it is both exciting and "sensible" work to do and I am looking forward to having an enjoyable and fruitful time in the field.

Links

https://www.andreasbender.de
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasbender

I am an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and School of Modern Languages & Cultures (China Studies Programme) at the University of Hong Kong. Through fieldwork and remote sensing, I research the politics of infrastructure development in frontier spaces, namely the Arctic and areas included within China's Belt and Road Initiative. I also run a blog, Cryopolitics, which provides Arctic news, analysis, and travelogues.

Technological growth optimizing human experience while reducing information access barriers will ultimately lead to a more productive and satisfied world. Not limited to this technological interest, as former Chair of the Gates Scholar Council I have also explored published tenets about cross-cultural organizational behavior and politics, in the hope that creative solutions might emerge which reduce the usual bureaucratic boundaries which preclude the emergence of these technologies.

I grew up in Brisbane, Australia, surrounded by incredible areas of biodiversity, and was always asking questions about the animals around me. While working at RSPCA Queensland, I learned that as well as being critical parts of complex ecosystems, animals are individuals with unique personalities that influence how they move through the world. In my Honours study at the University of Queensland, I investigated the movement ecology and thermal physiology of salt water crocodiles, analysing over 9 million data points in R. It was here that I became fascinated by the insight we can obtain from remote monitoring of wildlife, and the challenges and benefits of analysing large, long term data sets. During my PhD in Zoology, I studied how antarctic seabirds use ocean habitat, to better understand polar ecology, to mitigate bycatch, and ultimately conserve these species. In addition to my academic interests, I am passionate about the value of outreach and education in the sciences. I believe that if we can better explain the excitement of scientific research to the wider community, we have a better chance of successfully implementing the policy changes needed to save endangered species and mitigate the effects of climate change. I am currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, developing new network models to understand marine migratory connectivity.

Previous Education

University of Queensland