Cohort 2017
Before coming to Oxford Michael studied engineering in Hamburg and Berkeley. He was part of the 2018 Trinity College MCR committee and the 2018 Clarendon Garden Party committee. In his spare time Michael enjoys running, cycling, rowing and connecting with others at Clarendon formal dinners.
Michael Garstka
College/Degree: Trinity College/DPhil Engineering
Country of Origin: Germany
Cohort: 2017
Qiujie Shi is a DPhil student in Geography. She received her Bachelor's (first-class) degree in Urban Planning, and Master's degree in Human Geography, both from Peking University, China.Her doctoral research compares inequalities in Beijing and London, and highlights how such a comparison can broaden our urban knowledge and advance a more global urban agenda. She has a wide range of research interests, including migration and citizenship, global cities, socio-spatial inequality, and comparative urbanism.
Qiujie Shi
College/Degree: St John's/DPhil in Geography
Country of Origin: China
Cohort: 2017
I'm a medical physics student who is interested in data privacy, open-source communities, permaculture and enjoys reading & the outdoors. Trying to learn how to rollerskate.
Emma Bluemke
College/Degree: New College/PhD Biomedical Engineering
Country of Origin: Canada
Cohort: 2017
Prior to the DPhil, Kelsey received an MSc in Higher Education from the University of Oxford and a JD from the University of Hawaii. Her research interests include doctoral/research writing, post-PhD careers, and academic publishing practices.
Kelsey Inouye
College/Degree: Linacre/DPhil (Education)
Country of Origin: United States
Cohort: 2017
My DPhil research explores how development assistance changes relationships between civil society, rebel groups, and the state in Karen State, an area of Myanmar emerging from decades of civil war. Theoretically, I am interested in postcolonial statehood and the concept of territory. In my second year, I completed ten months of ethnographic research in Hpa-An and on the Thai-Myanmar border. On the side, I dance, I read, and I run; and I continue to work with NGOs in Myanmar and Singapore, on issues such as migrant labour, land rights, and peacebuilding.
Shona Loong
College/Degree: Christ Church/DPhil in Geography
Country of Origin: Singapore
Cohort: 2017
I am a DPhil student under the supervision of Professor Michael Osborne and Professor Stephen Roberts at MLRG as well as Professor Yarin Gal at OATML in University of Oxford. My research interest focuses on developing efficient Bayesian optimisation methods for tackling the challenge of automated machine learning (AutoML). And I’ve published several work on hyperparamter tuning, black-box adversarial attack and neural architecture search at top machine learning conferences like ICML, ICLR and NeurIPS. I also completed my undergraduate study as the top of my cohort in University of Oxford, holding a MEng degree in Engineering, Economics and Management.
Binxin Ru
College/Degree: St Hughs College/DPhil in Machine Learning
Country of Origin: China
Cohort: 2017
Madison’s research investigates the potential of multi-sectoral health and social protection interventions in improving the health and wellbeing of children and adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, his research in the region focused on evaluating structural HIV interventions and policies, bioethics systems for supporting ethically-sound clinical trials, social inclusion interventions for LGBTI populations, and gender-based violence prevention programmes. Prior to the DPhil, Madison completed the MSc in Evidence-Based Social Intervention & Policy Evaluation (with Distinction) at the University of Oxford and graduated as Valedictorian of Rutgers University with a BSc in Public Health.
Madison Little
College/Degree: Green Templeton College/DPhil in Social Intervention & Policy Evaluation
Country of Origin: United States
Cohort: 2017
My research concerns the statistical physics of soft matter, where I use analytical approaches to understand the macroscopic features of living systems such as cell colonies and tumours. I am also interested in understanding charged fluids in biological contexts where they are often driven out of thermal equilibrium and exhibit unusual phenomena. Preveously, I obtained my BSc and MSc degrees in Physics from Sharif University, Iran.
Saeed Mahdisoltani
College/Degree: St John's College/DPhil in Theoretical Physics
Country of Origin: Iran
Cohort: 2017
I am a DPhil student in the Oxford Robotics Institute, working on robotics and machine learning. My current research interests span the theory and application of visuomotor control, domain transfer and robot manipulation. Before coming to Oxford, I did my degrees in Maths and Computer Science in France. Fun fact - I was one of the three students from Taiwan in my cohort selected to study in prepa in France and I did not speak a word of French at that time. When I am not messing around with robots, I am practising judo, flying gliders or learning new languages.
Chia-Man Hung
College/Degree: Keble College/CDT Autonomous Intelligent Machines & Systems
Country of Origin: Taiwan
Cohort: 2017
I study fossil distributions to unravel the ways ecological communities responded to environmental change during past periods of climate change. Understanding extinction events in Earth’s history could help conservation biologists target species at risk from modern climate change. In daily work, I program statistical analyses on global datasets of fossil marine invertebrates—an approach that is interdisciplinary at heart, uniting ecological theory, geological data, and statistical tools. I joined Oxford in 2017 under primary supervision of Prof Erin Saupe in Earth Sciences, with an additional affiliation to Zoology through my secondary supervisor, Prof Tim Coulson.
Gwen Antell
College/Degree: St John's College/DPhil Earth Sciences
Country of Origin: United States
Cohort: 2017