Ruchi Mangtani (She/Her)

Hello there! I'm a history major at Columbia University. I spent 14 years as a border-crossing student, living in mainland China and commuting to Hong Kong every day. I  spent my high school years in Houston, Texas. My primary focus is transnational Asian history, though I am also broadly interested in philosophy, IR, and political theory.  I spent my freshman year at Rice and transferred to Columbia as a sophomore. I'm currently a rising junior.  I speak English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. I am currently unsuccessfully acquiring Japanese and French.

Hello! My name is Frankie and I'm a rising junior from Sacramento, California working on a combined major in Art History and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. My academic interests center of medieval representations of the womb and fetus, midwifery, and domesticity. I want to explore how artistic representations of pregnancy offer insight into the legal and religious governance of abortion. Broadly, my research examines the intersections of gender, power, and reproduction in late medieval Europe.

Hi! My name is Eleanor Cao, and I am a rising sophomore at Columbia University (Columbia College). I am interested in the intersection between political theory and intellectual history, with a special focus on modern Chinese thought and Taiwanese politics. In my first summer as a Laidlaw scholar, I probed Chinese political scientist Yan Jiaqi's theory of democracy in the long 1980s (1978-1992). I love art & literature, cats, corvids, crochet, figure skating, and more! Please feel free to chat with me--I would love to get to know you all!

Hello! My name is Christian Rebolledo, a rising sophomore in Columbia College at Columbia University studying Political Science and Medical Humanities with a Special Concentration in Public Health. I am passionate about intersecting the worlds of public health with political advocacy: people are social, and thus political. I am passionate about community building, civic engagement, and building systems for the next generation of leaders across disciplines. For my first summer as a Laidlaw scholar in the 2026 cohort, I will be characterizing postmortem data from ICE detention centers to identify trends across factors relatd to social determinants of health. I look forward to uncovering the quantitative facets of qualitative reporting currently populating the literature on carceral justice and public health.

Hello! I’m a psychology researcher and the founder of HaHaHelps, a comedy-based psychosocial programme designed to support young people in residential care. I am currently completing an MSocSci in Psychology at the University of Cape Town, where my dissertation examines the feasibility of HaHaHelps with adolescents in South African child and youth care centres. My broader interests include youth mental health, psychosocial intervention development, implementation, participatory approaches, and the use of humour and play to support connection, emotional expression, self-efficacy, and coping with uncertainty. HaHaHelps grew out of my Laidlaw Leadership-in-Action project at SOS Children’s Villages in Cape Town, where I designed and facilitated an improv-comedy programme for adolescents. Since then, I have continued developing and delivering the programme with young people in residential care and am now studying how it can be refined, evaluated, and ultimately adapted for use in other communities and settings. Before this, my Laidlaw research at the University of Toronto examined relationships between childhood adversity, aggression, and self-regulation. I’d love to connect with other Laidlaw Scholars and alumni interested in youth mental health, social impact, intervention development, social entrepreneurship, or simply finding creative ways to turn research into something useful in the world.

Hey everyone! My name is Rinaz Jamal, and I'm a rising sophomore at Columbia University majoring in Neuroscience & Behavior. I am passionate about helping individuals with mental health and neurodegenerative disorders feel seen, heard, and supported. This summer, I will be doing research at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute under the supervision of Dr. Franck Polleux. My project aims to understand the activity-dependent regulation of mitochondrial protein expression in parvalbumin-positive interneurons, which are among the first neurons to fail in Alzheimer's disease (AD). I am excited to add to the scholarly conversation around Alzheimer's research by identifying the molecular pathways that would be most valuable to target for drug development in the future. Because PV-INs are among the first neurons to fail in AD, understanding these metabolic pathways and restoring levels of mitochondrial proteins has the potential to improve clinical outcomes much earlier in AD progression than current methods. At Columbia, I am involved as a Scientific Review Editor for Grey Matters, our undergraduate neuroscience journal; Blog Editor for the Journal of Global Health; Conference Committee member and Peer Buddy for Columbia Synapse, which advocates for patients with acquired brain injury; and volunteer with Brain Exercise Initiative, where I visit patients with Alzheimer's disease and dementia at a local assisted living home. I also play flute and piccolo in the Columbia University Orchestra. In my free time, I love to read and explore New York City. Please feel free to reach out; I would love to get to know you all!

Hi! My name is Celine and I'm an undergraduate at Columbia University studying Economics-Political Science and Hispanic Studies. In addition to these topics, I also enjoy learnings about China-Taiwan history and politics.  A big part of my interests and passions also lie in journalism. I work as a student journalist at the Columbia Daily Spectator, where reporting on university news. I love studying the things I do because the allow me to tell stories and learn about people from across the world, just as journalism allows me to do here at Columbia.  In my free time, I also love cooking, baking, running, listening to music–maybe occasionally singing some karaoke–and spending time with my friends. 

Hello! My name is Abril Rodriguez Calle, and I am a student at Columbia University studying Medical Humanities with the goal of eventually becoming a doctor. My interests lie in the intersection between medicine, the healthcare system, and ethics, especially in understanding how healthcare decisions and policies affect both patients and communities. This summer, I will be working with Dr. Sandra Lee on an NIH-funded research project exploring the ethical, legal, and social dimensions of global genomics research partnerships. The project examines how institutions and communities negotiate issues such as data ownership, privacy, benefit-sharing, and decision-making in genomics research, with the goal of creating a practical “negotiation playbook” to support more meaningful and equitable collaboration. As part of the research team, I will help analyze policies and institutional practices while gaining experience in qualitative research, bioethics, and global health policy.

Hello! My name is Claire, and I am an incoming sophomore at Columbia University from Los Angeles, California studying Medical Humanities and Public Health on the pre-med track. Some of my academic interests include metacognition, writing, and health equity from an educational and technical perspective. This summer, I am conducting eye-tracking chemistry education research, analyzing how learners approach challenging questions and developing an AI tutor that can encourage more effective problem-solving strategies across a broad demographic.  In my free time, I love dancing, running, reading and trying new places to eat around New York. Feel free to reach out to talk research or to just say hello!