Cambridge University just opened its hallowed doors (and wallet) for two MIT alumnae, Mitali Chowdhury '24 and Christina Kim '24, naming them 2026 Gates Cambridge Scholars. This isn't just a fancy title; it's a full-ride ticket to pursue postgraduate studies across the pond. For Christina Kim, it's less of a ticket and more of a season pass — this is her second time receiving the scholarship. Because apparently, once wasn't enough.
Mitali Chowdhury, who snagged a BS in biological engineering from MIT (with minors in urban planning and environment, because why not be well-rounded?), is on a mission to shrink global health inequalities. While at MIT, she was busy building point-of-care diagnostics, which is a fancy way of saying she was creating accessible tech to spot and treat diseases. Her greatest hits include developing low-cost tests for bacterial water contamination in South Asia. Because clean water shouldn't be a luxury.
Now, she's working at a startup that's all about sequencing-based diagnostics. At Cambridge, she'll dive into an MPhil and PhD in Sensor Technologies, focusing on CRISPR-based diagnostics. The goal? To take on antimicrobial resistance and make healthcare more accessible. Which, if you think about it, is both impressive and slightly terrifying given the stakes.
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Start Your News DetoxChristina Kim, meanwhile, is practically a Cambridge veteran. After graduating from MIT with a degree in chemistry and biology, she jetted off to the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, to research women's health. She already completed an MPhil there as a 2025 Gates Cambridge Scholar, dissecting bioinformatics and tissue engineering to design new in vitro models.
Her second Gates Cambridge scholarship means she gets to stick around and keep pushing the boundaries with her PhD studies. Some people just really like libraries, apparently. Or, you know, solving complex scientific problems that could change the world. Either way, these two are definitely making the rest of us feel like underachievers.
