Directory

I've long been fascinated by how composers compose. Throughout my years studying piano and harpsichord performance, I found myself delving more deeply into music theory and exploring the blurry lines between improvisation, composition, and performance in baroque music. This led to my current project at Cambridge, in which I reveal the 'building blocks' of Handel's keyboard music to understand what makes it characteristically 'Handelian'. Studying Handel's music in England, his adopted home, makes this research experience even more exciting. As a committed educator and arts advocate, I am passionate about making classical music accessible to all through teaching, writing, and performing. Showing audiences how the music they love works makes it all the more approachable and engaging.

Previous Education

Yale University
New York University

Links

http://www.jonathansalamon.com

In the southwest Rocky Mountains, my formative years were spent shaping, and shaped by, nature. My architectural career proceeded to harness natural forces and materials through the planning, design and construction of communal rainwater catchment pavilions in Rwanda; solar/geo-thermal powered, net-zero energy neighborhoods and mixed-use urban infill projects in the USA; and self-sufficient, digitally-fabricated engineered timber homes, greenhouses, public space interventions, and future 'Biocities' in Spain. My doctoral research investigates how geospatial networks can inform place-based natural material value chains for development we’ll need to meet the demand for a worldwide doubling of built floor area by 2060 - while mitigating and adapting to global climate change by advancing carbon neutrality, resource security, ecosystem services, and ecologic as well as human health and wellbeing.

Previous Education

Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia Advanced Ecological Buildings 2019
University of Colorado at Boulder Env. Design: Architecture 2014

Links

https://valldaura.net
https://iaac.net/about-us/valldaura-labs
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelsalka

Currently, the world has been experiencing a massive burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCD) and cardiovascular diseases (CVD) constitute almost half of all chronic health hazards. Several CVD risk prediction models have been developed in different populations to estimate individual risk over a 10-year period. My PhD research will focus on the performance of existing CVD risk prediction models among the Bangladeshi population along with developing a risk score that is tailored and recalibrated to the contemporary circumstances in Bangladesh. Moreover, the research will also investigate the use of polygenic risk scores which will be a novel approach for this population. I will use BELIEVE data, one of the largest NCD cohorts in Bangladesh (73,000 participants), along with other globally relevant datasets to recalibrate the prediction model. This research will have multiple potential benefits to public health in Bangladesh, while also contributing more broadly to risk prediction research globally, specifically among the people of South Asian ancestry.

Previous Education

University of Cambridge Population Health Sciences 2023
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Public Health - Epidemiology 2020
University of Dhaka Medicine and Surgery 2015

After completing my MPhil in Social Anthropology through the Gates Scholarship, I taught anthropology for two years at O.P. Jindal Global University in India and helped run the University's Jindal Centre for Social Innovation + Entrepreneurship (JSiE). I am interested in issues of work, gender, and education, and I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Anthropology at Stanford.

Previous Education

Harvard University

I've worked in art and technology for more than 25 years. Since 2018, I've embraced digital humanities as a lens to examine assumptions about generative AI in policy, pedagogy, and design. My research frames generative AI as digital humanities in reverse. Where archivists grapple with organizing and preserving cultural memory, generative AI synthesizes generalities to create plausible representations of that memory. This raises fascinating questions about cultural meaning. Yet, we lack frameworks to articulate these questions, challenge these representations, or examine the practices that produce them. At Cambridge, my research will bridge archival approaches, media studies, and responsible data-training practices to produce these frameworks. Being named a Gates Scholar is an immense honor. As the first in my family to attend university, I earned degrees in New Media and Journalism from the University of Maine. I hold an MSc in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics, and in Applied Cybernetics from the Australian National University. I've been a Research Fellow at the Flickr Foundation, a Reporting Fellow at Tech Policy Press, and the Emerging Technology Research Advisor for the Siegel Family Endowment.

Previous Education

London School of Economics & Political Science (Un Media and Communications
Australian National University Applied Cybernetics
Keene State College Undeclared

I work as an academic who strives to bridge research and practice, looking at questions of how we build community and common cause across lines of difference. I completed my PhD in Social Anthropology as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, held a post in Human Geography for a year at the University of Oxford, and am currently a Fellow at The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. At Cambridge, my research focused on how people imagined and worked to build community in a highly-diverse London neighborhood, and what drew people together or held them apart. At Oxford, I looked at how cuts to public services were impacting the experiences of first-time parents, and at how the design of our cities and services shapes possibilities for care. My current research explores how community organizers in East London work to build diverse coalitions to drive meaningful grassroots-led political change -- and who or what gets included or left behind in these processes. I am committed to producing public-facing research that's capable of producing real change, and have worked for a range of non-profit and community groups, from the small to the international.

I've written for a range of academic and popular-press publications. If you want a sense of the sort of work I do, check out: https://aeon.co/essays/whats-the-best-way-to-find-common-ground-in-public-spaces

Links

https://farhansamanani.net

In versions one to three of this biography, I tried my best to show everyone why I think I’m a worthy Gates Scholar. I drew continuities between my different extra-curricular activities and my current research. In truth, I just did things – unexceptional things – because I found them interesting. I was never the brightest person in my class. I stumbled into my local university (you probably haven’t heard of it) after a particularly calamitous and short lived stint in investment banking. I did social psychology because I thought it could give me the edge to overcome my anxiety, captivate that special someone and play better cricket. Ironically, my PhD now focuses on precisely how little psychology speaks to those things. Instead, I argue that psychology can be useful when looking at trends, and that the individual – you – are eminently unknowable. It is this paradigm that guides my current study of happiness at scale… Overall, I am lucky. I’ve progressed down a path that I never planned, and towards a future that might never be clear. I’m just thankful that mum and dad are proud.

To those who are considering applying to Gates/Cambridge: I was rejected outright from Oxford and loads of other universities. My only offer was to Cambridge. I felt like an imposter when I arrived. I don’t anymore. Just give it a go!

2009

I was born and raised in Lima, Peru. I moved to the UK to pursue a career as a research scientist committed to have a positive impact on the quality of life of patients worldwide. With my grandmother having been recently cured from skin carcinoma and a family history of breast cancer, I became actively involved in cancer research. However, I became aware of less treatable, devastating conditions with unknown causes, such as neurodegenerative disorders. These are becoming a major threat to public health due to the phenomenon of the ageing population. My work at Cambridge will therefore focus on the study of the early events that lead to neuronal death in Parkinson’s disease. I hope to identify agents that can delay disease progression since current treatments only address the symptoms, rather than the causes of neurodegeneration. Additionally, I aim to establish links with centres in Latin America to promote research and the role of women in science back home.

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jessica-santivanez/88/84b/864

My research interest lies in trying to appreciate the various articulations of popular religion and religious music in Bengal. On completing my studies in the University of Cambridge, I would ideally like to engage in an active research and teaching career.

I grew up in a village not far from the capital of Armenia, Yerevan. At the age of ten, my parents transferred me to one of the best schools in the country - Quantum, where I was given many opportunities to go beyond the normal classwork. I developed great interest in computer science and mathematics, and participated in numerous science competitions. The highly motivating environment in school helped me to eventually start an undergraduate degree at MIT. I immediately chose to study my favourite subject: computer science. Besides my own studies, I have always been interested in teaching myself. At MIT through the Global Teaching Labs program, I taught a month-long computer science course in a high school in Italy. Two years after that we were able to bring the program to my home country, Armenia, where I also taught. In the last two years at MIT, I was involved in research in computational connectomics, a branch of neuroscience that aim to understand the low level structure of the brain and how it "computes." I am excited to undertake doctoral studies in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge, explore what are the limits of randomised distributed computation models, and how we can use distributed computing to model natural processes.

Previous Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayk-saribekyan

Hailing from a humble Indian suburb, I got enrolled at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata (IISERK), India, for an Integrated BS-MS in the Physical Sciences, and pursued my Master's thesis in astrophysics as a visiting student at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. At Cambridge, I will have a broader opportunity to better understand the progenitors of overluminous Type Ia supernovae, that are said to violate the Chandareskhar limit. Growing up, I have always strived to promote astronomy and astrophysics as an extremely intriguing field of research, and I plan to continue doing the same as a PhD student in Cambridge. I am profoundly grateful to be awarded the Gates-Cambridge scholarship, and this scholarship has paved the way for me to continue contributing original ideas into my field of research, alongwith fuelling a fascination for the cosmos among the student community, by and large in those who are specifically intrigued by astronomy and astrophysics.

Links

https://arnabsarkar.home.blog

Dr Sovan Sarkar is a Birmingham Fellow (equivalent to Assistant Professor) at the University of Birmingham, and holds the distinction of Former Fellow for life at Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge. He studies the biological process of autophagy, which is an intracellular degradation pathway essential for cellular survival. Utilizing human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and disease-specific human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) to establish human cellular platforms, his lab works on the regulation and therapeutic application of autophagy in relation to human physiology and diseases. He aims to develop a pipeline originating from basic biology to drug discovery, and potentially translate the findings for biomedical applications. He has made several contributions in the field of autophagy including the identification of mTOR-independent signalling pathways and small molecules modulating autophagy. These findings not only provided mechanistic insights into the cell biology of this process, but also generated potential therapeutic candidates for diverse human diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases where upregulating autophagy acts as a protective pathway. His work also involves the fundamental regulation of autophagy in physiologically-relevant hESCs, and its deregulation in disease-relevant cell-types differentiated from hiPSC models. He has co-authored more than 65 scientific publications, which have collectively received over 20000 citations (Google Scholar), and have generated 4 patents and various research features such as in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Nature Chemical Biology, Molecular Cell and Times of India. He is also involved in scientific engagements with institutions in India as part of the University of Birmingham India Institute.

Previous Education

Madurai Kamaraj Univ, India MSc Biotechnology 2002
University of Calcutta BSc Physiology 2000

Links

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/cancer-genomic/sarkar-sovan.aspx
https://www.sovansarkarlab.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sovan-sarkar-b3218b25
http://www.mit.edu/~sarkar

I pursued an MPhil in Pathology at Cambridge in Dr. Jim Ajioka’s parasitology lab. I am currently an obstetrics and gynecology resident at NYU interested in gynecologic oncology and global health.

Growing up in Bogotá, Colombia, I grappled with the idea of conveying a more truthful and nuanced portrayal of our people’s history to the rest of the world. In 2019, I moved to the United States to pursue a degree in History and Creative Writing, with a minor in Data Science, at Northwestern University. During my studies, I became intrigued by the stigmatization of Colombian immigrants due to our association with drug trafficking history. This interest evolved into a senior thesis that analyzed hundreds of periodical sources and oral histories to uncover how this narrative evolved. Now pursuing an MPhil in digital humanities at Cambridge, I’m merging my interests in immigration narratives and digital methods to develop a GIS map that provides a fresh perspective on the complex relationship between Colombian identity and drug trafficking. My goal is to create a digital exhibition that challenges stereotypes about global Colombians and Latin Americans, showcasing it at museums and galleries worldwide with the help of the Gates Community. I’m excited to open up new avenues for understanding and appreciation of our historical memory.

Previous Education

Northwestern University History, English, Data Science 2023