My name is Laura Imperatori and I studied the Natural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge University. Before I came here I was very interested in three questions: “Does a theory of everything exist?”, “How are we able to think logically and critically and seem to have a free will based upon physical and chemical processes in our brain?” and “How can we use our scientific knowledge to tackle climate change?”
Studying the Natural Sciences Tripos enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of how nature works, but only practical experience could help me to decide which one of these questions I wanted to dedicate my time and energy to. I found that the Gateway programme (in Murray Edwards) did not only help me in the organisation of my studies, but it also enabled me to gain research experience in different fields through the financial support of the Gateway Challenges Funding Award. I received an Award for summer activities in all three years of my undergraduate studies, which helped me make a well-founded decision about my third-year-courses as well as my Master’s degree. In my fourth year of the Natural Sciences Tripos, I will be able to advise the incoming students based on my own experiences.
Having spent a gap year working in the Dominican Environment Ministry, I have been interested in environmental issues especially during my first year, so I decided to participate in the “Cambridge Summer Programme on International Policy and Climate Change Risk Assessment”. However, since then through my involvement with the Cambridge University Physics Society and others I realised that I would like to work in basic research. In the following summer, I conducted a two-month-long internship combining my interest in Physics and in Neuroscience: I investigated the community structure of the C. elegans neural network at the Theory of Condensed Matter group of the Cavendish Laboratory. Based on this internship I realised that my interest in the more complex workings of the human brain outweighs my interest in what we can currently find out about the brain using Statistical Mechanics. As a result, I made the decision to study Half-Subject Physics with Experimental Psychology in my third year. …continue reading…
