Four members of the US armed forces are among the thirty-seven new US Gates scholars who will take up their places at one of the world’s most ancient universities this fall.
Four members of the US armed forces are among the thirty-seven new US Gates scholars who will take up their places at one of the world’s most ancient universities this fall.
The 37 students, whittled down from an initial field of 752 and a shortlist of 101, include the first Gates Cambridge scholar from the Air Force Academy as well as the first scholars from the University of Mississippi, Hamilton College, the University of California-Davis, the University of Kansas and the University of Pittsburgh.
The scholarship programme, set up in 2000 and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, enables postgraduates with a strong interest in social leadership and responsibility to study at the University of Cambridge.
The four members of the armed forces include Adam Comer from the US Air Force Academy who will do an MPhil in Engineering focusing on injector dynamics. His aim is to provide new ways of powering defence and aviation technologies. As a student in the US Air Force Academy, he is vice president of the Air Force Academy’s Engineers Without Borders chapter and is heading an effort to provide low-cost housing designs to impoverished Navajo Indians.
Like Comer, many of this year’s intake, who will be on hand to celebrate Cambridge University’s 800th anniversary, are interested in working on sustainable transport solutions.
Orian Welling is planning to do a PhD in Engineering and has already converted his truck to run on waste vegetable oil; won a prize at MIT for designing solar coolers for use on the Tibetan plateau; recently designed a simple bicycle-powered generator to power laptops and has been in Indonesia to design solar-powered water-pumping systems for remote villages. He was interviewed by cell phone since he is in South Africa spending his honeymoon cycling from South Africa to Egypt. He has previously cycled twice across the USA, and from Alaska to Argentina.
Others are pursuing research which chimes with the key objectives of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, such as the intersection between public health and biology. Alexandra Kamins from Emory University, for example, is doing an MPhil in Veterinary Science and will work on virus spillovers in domestic animals and humans. She says: “I plan to combine my interests and experiences to help create communication between human and animal heath sectors and to manage zoonotic disease spread. The odds are that the next pandemic will be one of these diseases and I want to do my part to stop it.”
Victor Roy, who completed his undergraduate degree at Northwestern University in 2007 and who will study an MPhil in Modern Society and Global Transformations, is executive director of GlobeMed, a national organisation enabling students to improve the health of communities around the world. He is interested in the impact of neo-liberal economic policies on the public health of low and middle-income nations. He says: “By combining my skills as a clinician with those of a social scientist, I hope to shape and advocate for policies aimed at realizing equity in global health”.
Fourteen out of the 37 new scholars, who come from 27 towns and cities in 18 states, are from the life sciences, including biology and medicine. Some have international experience: Kendra Millington, who is currently at Mayo Medical School, has worked in Aids education in Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria and done patient care in India.
David Dillon, from Northwestern University who plans to study public health policy at Cambridge before getting a medical doctorate, said that even during the interview process for the scholarship there were "101 people there who have the potential to change the world."
This year for the first time, medical sciences applicants who were shortlisted for a Gates interview at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, have been contacted by the National Institutes of Health and asked if they wish to apply for a joint NIH-Cambridge scholarship. Candidates who are successful will be announced next week.
Gordon Johnson, Provost (CEO) of the Gates Cambridge Trust, said: “We are delighted with the new batch of American Gates Scholars selected in Annapolis. Not only will these talented young people engage fully with the University and Colleges while in Cambridge, but they are likely to become leaders in their fields and use the educational opportunities they have had to address important and pressing problems facing societies around the world.”
Photo: 2008 Gates scholars on their orienteering course
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