Princeton senior Brian Mhando awarded Gates Cambridge Scholarship

Princeton University senior Brian Mhando has been awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. The awards recognize students for “outstanding intellectual ability,” “leadership potential” and “a commitment to improving the lives of others,” among other criteria. They cover the full cost of a postgraduate degree at the University of Cambridge.

Mhando is among 26 U.S. winners of the scholarship who will join the 2026 cohort. Winners from other countries will be announced later as part of an international cohort.

Mhando is majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology (EEB) and minoring in African studies, African American studies, and global health and health policy. He plans to pursue an MPhil in veterinary science at Cambridge in preparation for a career as an epidemiologist, with an initial focus on village health systems in East Africa. (At Cambridge, some epidemiologists researching human disease are based in the veterinary science department.) Later, he plans to pursue a Ph.D.

His mother’s battle with breast cancer drew his attention to inequities in healthcare, he wrote in his application, and was one of his inspirations to pursue a career in global health, developing equitable and cost-effective health systems to support people worldwide.

He wrote his junior research paper on gonococcal resistance in East Africa, was awarded senior thesis research funding as a global health scholar to study HIV in Uganda, and has published papers that contribute to interdisciplinary health scholarship.

Mhando is now writing his senior thesis on gonorrhea and antibiotic misuse in Ugandan villages, informed by scientific research and clinical volunteer work he conducted in Uganda last summer. At Cambridge, he wrote in his application, “I will have opportunities to collaborate with Africa’s future world leaders — who, like me, hope to change the continent for the better.”

Bryan Grenfell, his senior thesis adviser, called him “a superb prospect as a Gates Cambridge Scholar.” 

“He brings a very unusual combination of skills to his senior thesis work, integrating computational biology and medical anthropology. This allows him to understand the impact of infectious disease through these biological, computational and social lenses,” said Grenfell, the Kathryn Briger and Sarah Fenton Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Public Affairs. “I think he'll go on to great things in global health, and the Gates Scholarship is the ideal next step in this trajectory.”

During his time at Princeton, Mhando’s scientific research has also included the study of antimicrobial resistance in India and cervical cancer drugs with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and fieldwork as an EEB intern studying plants on Sedge Island in New Jersey and as a High Meadows Environmental Institute intern researching bird biodiversity in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. 

Additionally, he has conducted policy research at Princeton's Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination (LISD) and served as a research assistant with the Department of Politics, where he helped organize a public health conference that was attended by global health leaders.

“Brian is one of the most impressive undergraduate students I have worked with,” said Barbara Buckinx, a research scholar and lecturer in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Buckinx oversees the Africa Program at LISD, where Mhando is a fellow and co-leader, and supervised his oral history of AIDS health workers in Uganda. She also co-authored a paper with him on equitable access during pandemics. 

She cited his combination of passion, research aptitude and leadership. “From the moment I hired him as a research assistant, he stood out for his maturity, depth of knowledge, and extraordinary work ethic. He quickly became a true co-organizer of a major international conference and policy work on global health, contributing at the highest professional level.”

Heather Howard, professor of the practice at Princeton SPIA, who taught Mhando in two courses, “Critical Perspectives in Global Health Policy” and “Health Reform in the U.S.,” said he “stands out for his intellectual curiosity, deep ethical engagement and acute investigative sense,” adding, “I know he will make significant contributions to the field.”

Outside the classroom, Mhando has tutored in chemistry and calculus at the McGraw Center; volunteered with Princeton’s Camp Kesem, a summer camp for children whose parents have cancer; and served as an Outdoor Action orientation leader. He is a former associate editor at the Daily Princetonian and chaired Princeton’s Undergraduate Student Government’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee. In 2022, as a student at New York City’s Regis High School, he was one of 26 high school students nationwide awarded the Princeton Prize in Race Relations.