The Gates Cambridge Trust has announced the 2020 class of Gates Cambridge Scholars.

This year's class of seventy-seven scholars will receive scholarships to pursue studies at the University of Cambridge in England, with 80 percent seeking a PhD in areas of study ranging from the impact of climate change on coastal birds and rabies control, to Indigenous rights in New Zealand, to the moral basis of identity-based harm. This year's scholarship winners include individuals from thirty countries, with seventeen institutions of higher education producing their first Gates Cambridge Scholar.

Established in 2001 with a $210 million gift from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the program selects graduate students based on their academic ability and commitment to improving the lives of others. Since 2001, more than seventeen hundred scholars from over a hundred countries have been selected to participate in the program.

This year's recipients include Shadrack Frimpong (Ghana), who will study how community engagement and farm revenues can help eliminate barriers to health care in poor countries; Muhamad Hartono (Sumatra), who will work to develop nanomaterials for a combined therapy/diagnosis for pancreatic cancer treatment; Niamh O'Neill (Ireland), who will pursue a PhD focused on the mathematical underpinnings of computational techniques and high-performance computing; and Amelia Urry (United States), a prize-winning poet and journalist who will study the history of scientific uncertainty in the climate science of Antarctica.

"The Gates Cambridge Scholars are an outstanding group of people," said Stephen Toope, the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge and chair of the Gates Cambridge trustees. "They have not only demonstrated exceptional academic abilities in their fields but have also shown a real commitment to engaging with the world — and to changing it for the better. They truly embody the values our university cherishes — excellence, a global outlook, and an aspiration to contribute to society, values that are needed more than ever at this terrible time."