Gates-Cambridge Personal Statement
For entry beginning 2019. Character count: 2985
Obi is nine years old, and he is a genius. We chat at length about solar sails, the discovery of neutrinos,
and the existence of gluons. He asks endless questions. I attempt to give answers. As of this moment, we are
in stasis, and it’s all because Obi lives in Snug, a small township of fewer than 1000 people. Opportunities
rarely nd themselves in Snug.
This year, I took on the role of a Young Tassie Scientist, visiting many schools just like the one Obi at-
tends and meeting over 1200 Tasmanian students in similar situations. I have been cross-examined at length
by inquisitive young people, unwavering in their desire to know if I’ve been to space, if I know how life formed
on Earth, or if I’ve ever failed a spelling test. Many of these students had not met a scientist before and
had you asked them to sketch a picture of one, they most certainly would not have drawn me. The message
that I take with me in my community work is that a scientist can look like anyone, and there are many ca-
reers in science and technology open to the youth of rural Tasmania if they are brave enough to seek them out.
Our community has a strong connection to the night sky, and it is the beauty and awe of that canvas
which I aim to share with others. To this end, I have partnered with the astronomy festival TastroFest with
the goal of sharing the wonders of physics with the community which raised me. I was inspired to seek out
this opportunity by my work with the citizen science project Radio Galaxy Zoo, which was also my rst foray
as a rst-year undergraduate student into astrophysics research. I used data processed by citizen scientists
to investigate whether the relativistic jets of plasma launched by supermassive black holes are aected by
the galactic environment they launch into. As the public were co-authors of this work, I felt that it was only
appropriate for them to give their questions and feedback before we presented it to the scientic community,
and their interest was striking, to say the least.
At the University of Cambridge, I will be studying chaotic motions within black hole accretion disks
and tackling some of the most fundamental open problems in uid dynamics. This work will be supervised
by Prof Chris Reynolds, with the possibility for interdisciplinary collaborations to take our research out
of the world of black holes and into those of solar wind and fusion reactor design, to name a few. With
the support of Cambridge and the Gates Cambridge community, I will continue in my outreach work with
initiatives such as the Cambridge Physics Experience and Physics at Work, connecting rural communities
with the wonders of science. Throughout it all, I will look to further equal opportunity in the eld of physics
education, particularly with the 15-25 age group. The stories of these young people are not yet written in
stone. Small actions have changed the life of one young boy; larger actions by only a few people will change
the lives of many.
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