Zhiyu 'Melanie' Chen (Keswick, 2016-18) is among the 77 recipients of the 2023 Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Zhiyu grew up in Xuzhou, a city in eastern China. She joined Roedean in 2016 and went on to study Natural Sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she will return this October to undertake a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science. Her interest lies broadly in the cross-cultural production and reception of scientific images, objects, and texts, and she will be focusing on the history of map-making in western Pacific between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Gates Cambridge Scholarship programme was established through a US$210 million donation to the University of Cambridge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000; this remains the largest single donation to a UK university. It funds international postgraduate students from across the globe and from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds with the emphasis on diversity of thinking. Gates Cambridge Scholars are selected not just for their academic excellence, but for their ability to do just that in order to achieve wider social impact.

More information on Gates Cambridge can be found on www.gatescambridge.org and a list of the class of 2023 can be found on the Gates Cambridge Directory page.