The University of Cambridge and the Gates Cambridge program Feb. 14 announced the first group of U.S.-based students as 2019 Gates Cambridge Scholars.

A total of 34 of the most academically outstanding and socially committed U.S. citizens have been selected to be part of the 2019 class at the University of Cambridge, including five Indian American graduate students, the U.K.-based university said.

The U.S. Scholars-elect, who will take up their awards this October, are from 37 universities including seven institutions that have for the first time produced a Gates Cambridge Scholar, a news release said. 

Among the scholars was Dhruv Nandamudi, who will do a doctorate in biological science. The Indian American did his undergraduate studies at Yale where he was director of the Yale Wellness Project and helped design and conduct a large-scale study aimed at better understanding the role of stress in student life and lessening its negative impact.

Through a combination of neuroimaging and molecular paradigms, his doctorate will focus on exploring the neuroscientific relationship between stress and memory control or ‘motivated forgetting’ where people forget unwanted memories, either consciously or unconsciously, according to his bio.

“My goal is to better understand the mechanisms guiding the interaction between stress and motivated forgetting in an effort to inform potential treatment methodologies for psychological disorders by enhancing cognitive emotion regulation,” Nandamudi said.

Mika Jain, who earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford University, was also among the scholars named. At Cambridge, Jain, originally from South Africa though raised in New York, will pursue an M.Phil in biological science.

Jain in his bio said he was first drawn to the elegance and explanatory power of physics, then became interested in applying its experimental techniques to study biological systems.

“At Cambridge, I will use a combination of experimental and computational approaches to study the genetic basis of complex disease,” he said. “I strongly believe integrating new experimental and computational methods will lead not only to fundamental advances in biology but also to more informative diagnostics, more targeted treatments, and more accessible healthcare.”

Nitika Mummidivarapu, an undergraduate student at U.C. Davis, was also named a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

As an Indian émigré raised in the Silicon Valley, Mummidivarapu said she found that the progressive views of the area juxtaposed the cultural and religious aspects of my heritage, according to her bio.

Balancing the fundamental ideologies of science and religion became an inherent struggle in her desire to understand how the world worked, she said. Through her academic endeavors in the biological sciences and the humanities, Mummidivarapu said she felt empowered to challenge the dichotomous view she had of the world.

While volunteering in her community, she discovered the downstream effects of poorly-written scientific literature and the resulting consequences in healthcare. Frustrated by this mistrust in and misrepresentation of science, she then began to explore the shortcomings and limitations of science as a practice.

“At Cambridge, I hope to explore and understand if appealing to a group’s cultural and religious values will improve their understanding and acceptance of scientific theories,” the Indian American, who will pursue an M.Phil in history and the philosophy of science and medicine, said. “With a future in medicine and literature, I believe the merging of these two disparate fields will be a central mode for understanding how to improve healthcare in a diverse and modern society.”

Kiran Sridhar is another Indian American scholar named by the program. Sridhar, who will pursue an M.Res in strategy, marketing and operations as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, is pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Stanford University and a master’s from Tsinghua University.

There are few more pressing problems facing the world than the specter of cyberwarfare, according to Sridhar.

“Our lives are increasingly reliant on technology; a cyberattack could imperil our health, security, or economic prospects. This is a challenge my generation will face, particularly for those living in liberal democracies, like the U.S., where my parents immigrated to and which has provided me with so many opportunities,” he said in his bio, adding that he wants to be a part of the solution.

Sridhar said he is particularly interested in quantifying the costs of cyberattacks. After spending a year at Tsinghua University in Beijing, he says he is excited to study Strategy, Management, and Operations at Cambridge, working with the Centre for Risk Studies.

“I hope to conduct research in partnership with government agencies, insurance companies, and computer science researchers to elucidate the cyber threat,” he said.

Another scholar named was Sridhar Sriram, who is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Sriram in his bio said that he was fortunate to have a family that stressed that actions were only meaningful if they wielded a positive impact on those around an individual.

In college, his interest in societal interactions led to a major in public policy in an attempt to turn those fiction pieces into policies. Additionally, he said, a budding love for technology inspired him to pursue computer science to author short stories of impactful, real-world code.

He said he wanted to leverage technology as an empowering medium to uplift my surrounding communities. However, he quickly discovered that contemporary technologies are riddled with biases that manifest themselves in the algorithms that power these tools.

“With an MPhil in Technology Policy, I hope to gain an understanding of how best to regulate algorithmic bias without hampering the innovation process, while also exploring the technical frameworks necessary to tackle such biases,” he said in his bio. “In doing so, I hope to combine holistic policies with tangible, technical standards to craft the necessarily diverse, inclusive, and equitable technologies of the future.”

The U.S. scholars-elect will study and research subjects ranging from cybersecurity, choral music and technology biases to neurotrauma in low-resource settings and skeletal stem cells, it said.

The prestigious postgraduate scholarship program – which fully funds postgraduate study and research in any subject at the University of Cambridge – was established through a $210 million donation to the University of Cambridge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000.

The program, according to the university, is the largest single donation to a U.K. university. Since the first class in 2001 there have been more than 1,600 Gates Cambridge Scholars from over 100 countries who represent more than 600 universities globally and more than 80 academic departments and all 31 Colleges at Cambridge. 

In addition to outstanding academic achievement the program places emphasis on social leadership in its selection process as its mission is to create a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others.

The U.S. Scholars-elect will join about 60 Scholars from other parts of the world, who will be announced in early April after interviews in late March.

The class of 2019 will join current Gates Cambridge Scholars in October to form a community of approximately 220 Scholars in residence at the world-leading University of Cambridge.

“The Trust is delighted to have awarded Gates Cambridge Scholarships to outstanding students from the USA in the first of its two selection rounds for entry in 2019,” Barry Everitt, provost of the Gates Cambridge Trust, said.

“Like their predecessors, they are an extraordinarily impressive and diverse group who have already achieved much in terms of their academic studies and leadership abilities and have already shown their commitment to improving the lives of others in a multitude of ways,” Everitt added. “We are particularly delighted that we were able to offer awards to a large number of Ph.D. scholars. We are sure that the entire class of 2019 will flourish in the vibrant, international community at Cambridge as Gates Cambridge Scholars and that they will make a substantial impact in their fields and to the wider global community.”

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