Directory

Neuroscience has been considered one of the final frontiers of science; a labyrinth of cellular connections that we still barely understand. So much of what makes the brain amazing can also lead to devastating disease. The drive to discover solutions to unanswered questions has been my motivation as a research scientist. I have been provided the unique opportunity to develop my own experiments and lead projects which contributed to the breakthrough of a novel drug into clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease. Seeing the impact innovative research has on patients’ lives has solidified my desire to pursue a career focused on scientific advancements in neurodegeneration. For my PhD in Clinical Neuroscience, I will study new methods identifying cellular irregularities in ALS with the use of patient derived cell lines. ALS was thought to be strictly a motor neuron disease, but recent advancements have shown that the support cells, astrocytes, could cause aspects of disease pathology. I hope that studying three dimensional cell organoids will shine light on new therapeutic pathways for patients in need and bridge the gap between conventional two dimensional cell cultures and clinical trials. I am honored to be joining the Gates Cambridge community, surrounded by diverse scholars working to make a difference around the world.

Previous Education

Allegheny College

http://jaysilver.net

After graduating from Stanford University in 2009 with a B.A. in international relations and economics, I spent the past four years working in international development research and practice, most recently with the global health policy team at the Center for Global Development. This year, I am excited to be pursuing an MPhil in Public Health with support from the Gates Cambridge Trust. Driven by the belief that we have an ethical obligation to save as many lives as possible with the resources at our disposal, my interests lie at the intersection of global health and economics, particularly with regard to efficient and equitable resource allocation (priority-setting) and incentive structures to maximize “value for money” in health policy. It is my hope that my studies at Cambridge will enable me to be a stronger advocate for evidence-based public health decision-making.

Links

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/support/the-churchill-centre/publications/finest-hour-online/student-papers/662-grand-strategies

Across the world, alternative political communities fight to represent the masses, ranging from that of alternative political parties, NGOs, to protesters that gather in the city. Through studying, conducting research, and teaching at the National University of Singapore, I have explored this at various urban scales, with the goal of illuminating political inequalities embedded in the city. I further pursued this goal as an MPhil student at the University of Cambridge, which deepened my understanding of these issues beyond Singaporean shores. Concurrently, I have also been involved in events designed to bring related theories into the everyday context. My proposed PhD study aims to explore the urban spatialities of diasporic communities in the UK, examining the social spaces required for political expression and relevant other issues such as social integration. I hope for my research to be a platform documenting the complexity of their stories, in so broadening traditional conceptions of migratory urbanisms. I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to continue my education at Cambridge as a Gates Scholar, and will continue developing my capacity as a leader and researcher who can meaningfully impact the community around me.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Architecture and Urban Studies 2022
National University of Singapore Architecture 2021

My academic research and career has been driven by my passion for using evidence to improve the lives of others – particularly children and people who are disadvantaged and vulnerable. My PhD research examined what actually happens when juveniles are interviewed by police officers; in particular, I examined the interrogation techniques used by police officers, and the effectiveness of these techniques at eliciting different responses from the young suspects.
Since completing my doctorate in 2014 I have used my research skills to design, lead and conduct evaluations, including of UK and European public policy initiatives at RAND Europe in Cambridge, UK, and more recently of international development projects at the Centre for Evaluation and Development in Mannheim, Germany.

During my time at Yale, I have concentrated my studies on the ethics and politics of the criminal justice system with a particular emphasis on sentencing and alternatives to incarceration. While at Cambridge, I seek to further examine the limits of individual culpability in criminal sentencing, especially as they relate to racial and economic marginalization. By integrating sentencing theory with the study of crime's causes, I aspire to show that precluding identity markers of adversity from sentencing guidelines can often lead to more unjust outcomes. Outside of classes, I have spent time working with the Federal Public Defenders, the Legal Action Center (an advocacy organization for individuals with criminal records and substance use disorders), the New Haven Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, and Yale Students for Private Prison Divestment. As one of the first children born to two gay dads through assisted reproduction, I am also proud to have advocated for LGBTQ families on the news and in the courtroom. I am lucky to serve as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Non-Profit COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gay Everywhere). I could not be more honoured to be joining the Gates Cambridge community to work and learn with others committed to thoughtful and effective social change.

Previous Education

Oxford University
Yale University

I have recently graduated from Imperial College London with an M.Res. in Structural Molecular Biology after obtaining a B.Sc in Biochemistry from the Technical University of Munich in 2009. My decision to focus on the structural and biophysical aspects of biochemistry was influenced by two research projects in the field of DNA repair and RNA crystallography at the Immune Disease Institute in Boston, MA and at Yale University, respectively, in 2009 and 2010. At Cambridge, I am pursuing a PhD in Biochemistry, where I will have the opportunity to combine my previous research interests by structurally characterizing a protein factor that is part of the replisome progression complex (RPC) and thus is involved in DNA replication. With the dysregulation or dysfunction of RPC components being linked to genomic instability, I hope that my work in Cambridge will help to contribute to a better understanding of the mutual interplay of different RPC factors and to clarify their respective role.

I graduated from the University of Florida with highest honours and the equivalent of class valedictorian. There, I completed my B.S. degree double majoring in Chemistry and Cognitive/Behavioral Neuroscience with a minor in Philosophy. My previous research involvements have varied widely, ranging from healthcare disparities to behavioral neuroscience to stem cell biology to synthetic chemistry and pharmacology. I ultimately gravitated towards chemistry because I saw the unique power chemists possess to develop novel therapies and therefore profoundly improve an indefinite number of lives. Under the auspices of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, I will be reading for an MPhil in Chemistry at Christ’s College, working in the Gonçalo Bernardes research group with the aim of developing new, more selective cancer therapeutics. In this project, we have chosen a bold and innovative approach of using quadruple helical DNA structures as platforms to hold both cancer-targeting antibodies and cancer-cell-killing drugs. Further, I will develop synthetic methods to chemically link these different classes of biomolecules (i.e., DNA and protein). With these novel and beautiful structures, we hope to circumvent the poor efficacy and terrible side effects of current, standard-of-care chemotherapy and increase the therapeutic utility of first generation antibody-drug conjugates, with the ultimate goal improving human life and patient outcomes.

Previous Education

University of Florida

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-g-simpson

I am studying the labour history, production regimes, and automobile industry of mid-20th and 21st-century India. I will be tracing the differences in the modes of production, modes of control, violence, resistance, and working lives in industrialized countries with that of the countries in the global South, particularly India. My methodological interests are labour historiography, economic history, and archival research. My academic focus stems from three years of involvement with labourers in the Gurugram-Manesar-Faridabad automotive region and my multidisciplinary study of labouring lives at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). I am locating the ‘labour question historically’ and ‘regimes of production’ in the mid-twentieth (since the start of the auto-component manufacturing industry) and the twenty-first-century automobile industry in India. I am mapping out the changes in class formation comprehensively, [dominant] mode of production, working-class resistance movements, feminization, and state-capital-labour relations. Such a comprehensive historical account of the auto-sector workers is absent in the existing labour historiography.

Previous Education

Jawaharlal Nehru University Development and Labour Studies 2022
Christ University, Bangalore Economics (Honours) 2020

My research ranges across the late medieval and early modern periods (c. 1350-1700). I am a literary scholar and book historian interested in the relationship between early English books and their readers, a topic investigated in my work on Chaucer's early modern reception and on the emergence of printed epistles to readers in English books.

While at Cambridge I was extensively involved in the Medieval Reading Group at Cambridge and its associated journal, "Marginalia", and served as Chair of the Gates Cambridge Scholars' Council (2013-14).

My research examines how the Finnish modernist Alvar Aalto’s ecclesiastical oeuvre can enrich our understanding of the relationship between religion and modern architecture, and revise misleadingly uncomplicated assumptions concerning their mutual exclusivity.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge
Yale University

I am currently faculty in the Centre for High Energy Physics group of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

Links

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/as402

I have finished my PhD on superconducting-ferroelectric heterostructures. I am now a postdoctoral research associate in the Cavendish labs, department of Physics.

After graduating from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 2012 with a Bsc degree in Physics, I decided to switch to mathematical biology on the international Erasmus Mundus Masters in Complex Systems Science programme. My research here focused on epidemiological modelling, with applications on Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease and human influenza, both fundamentally influenced by the dynamics of genetically different strains. During my PhD, I aim to create a spatially explicit population genetics framework to explore how different selection across the species range can affect the spread of beneficial traits, using recent genetic data. Aside from applications, such as shaping efforts in conservation ecology or searching for genes of medical importance by distinguishing between effects of demographic events and selection, it will also help us reconstruct human demographic history and understand how species can rapidly adapt to changing environmental conditions.

Previous Education

University of Warwick 2013
University of Gothenburg 2012
Budapest University of Technology and Economics 2009