Penn senior named a 2021 Gates Cambridge Scholar

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University of Pennsylvania senior Tathagat Bhatia has been awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge in England.

From Lucknow, India, Bhatia is Penn’s 33rd Gates Scholar since the program’s beginning in 2001 and the second this year. Bhatia is one of an additional 50 recipients worldwide chosen from 30 countries for a total of 74 Scholars, announced on Wednesday. The scholarship covers the full cost of studying at Cambridge for as long as four years as well as additional discretionary funding. Bhatia joins 2015 graduate Joyce Kim, one of 24 from the United States to be named in the first cohort of 2021 Gates Cambridge Scholars announced in February.

Bhatia is majoring in science, technology and society with a concentration in energy and the environment with a minor in Russian studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.

His research involves environmental history and science and technology studies, with a focus on South Asia. His senior thesis on the role of United States development experts in diagnosing food crises in postcolonial India received support from the Center for the Advanced Study of India and the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. He recently completed a research project as a Rising Waters Fellow in the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, where he analyzed the disproportionate impact of lead in Philadelphia’s drinking water on communities of color.

At Penn, Bhatia is a Penn World Scholar, a Penn Emerging Scholar, and an undergraduate fellow with the Wolf Humanities Center. He works at the Penn Museum and the Penn LGBT Center. He is a teaching assistant, involved with the Radical South Asian Collective, and tutors students in Russian at the Penn Language Center. He is also a member of Penn’s Figure Skating Club. He studied abroad in St. Petersburg, where he led discussions at a community center about LGBTQ organizing in the U.S.

More information about the Gates Cambridge Scholarship is available from Penn’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.

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