Sampada Wagle

Student, Tufts University
Isabella Tabora

Student, Tufts University

Lena Tang

Undergraduate Student, Tufts University

Hello! My name is Lena and I'm a rising Junior at Tufts University. I am double-majoring in biology and community health and I am passionate about health equity and primary care. For my first Laidlaw summer I will be conducting qualitative research on respiratory health in a nearby Latinx community. Feel free to contact me through My LinkedIn Profile if you have similar interests or want to chat!
Hey ! I'm Arthur, a second year student at EPFL, currently studying physics. I love learning how things around me work, especially in physics and mathematics. I can't wait to meet lots of new people through the Laidlaw program ! I'm currently doing my internship at LASTRO, an astrophysics lab, and work on developping technologies (such as quantum computers and physics informed neural networks) to study the properties of dark matter. I love playing sports (running, hiking, tennis) and as a long time drummer, I also enjoy playing/listening to music. I am also open to any new experience, so feel free to reach out to me :)
Aung Khant Paing

Student, Tufts University

Ramina Bebezova

Student, Tufts University

I am a psychology & child study and human development student at Tufts University, passionate about mental health awareness, psychology research, and clinical interventions development. As a research assistant in Dr. Kredlow's Translational Emotion and Memory (TEAM) Lab and Dr. Mueller's Pets and Well-Being (PAW) Lab, I conduct research on emotional processing, adaptive coping, and factors contributing to social anxiety and peer stress. Aside from research, I am interested in how children's media and philosophical discussions can be used for promoting children's social and emotional learning and critical thinking.
Alejandro Andrés Álvarez Acuña

Student Scholar , Tufts University

Andrew Singleton (he series)

Administrator, Office of the Provost, Tufts University

Andrew Singleton has recently joined the Tufts-Laidlaw Undergraduate Research and Leadership Programme team as a Programme Administrator and is excited to continue to elevate the Laidlaw Programming for current and future scholars. He joined the programme from Venture Café, which connects and educates the entrepreneurial and innovation community in Boston through programs/spaces/events and many other cities around the world. He has a B.S. from MIT in Biology and a background in social-impact enterprises, wind-power, user-computer-interfaces, as well as computer network design. In his spare time, Andrew enjoys travel, hiking, and wildlife photography.
Trisha Bhujle

Laidlaw Scholar Alumna & Former Laidlaw Scholars Advisory Board Member, Laidlaw Foundation

Hello! I’m Trisha, a graduate of Cornell University from Texas, USA. I majored in Environment and Sustainability with a dual focus on food systems and wildlife conservation, and minored in International Relations. My interests in combining my enduring passions for writing and wildlife conservation have driven me to explore multiple perspectives on highly-controversial issues such as trophy hunting, retaliatory animal killings, and illegal wildlife crime. Thus, during my first summer as a Laidlaw Scholar and as a member of the Morally Contested Conservation team, I wrote a literature review on the interconnectedness of climate change and human-wildlife conflicts in East and southern Africa. In June and July 2024, I furthered this research by traveling to the University of Oxford and to the Burunge Wildlife Management Area in Tanzania, and returned to Oxford and Burunge in June and July 2025 to report my results.  As an aspiring conservationist, I am passionate about making technical scientific information more accessible to the general public. I speak Marathi, Spanish, and Swahili at varying levels of fluency and plan to continue to grow my language skills to communicate conservation challenges across continents and cultures.  The Laidlaw Scholars Program was an invaluable component of my undergraduate experience. The friendships I made, as well as the research and language skills I began to develop, encouraged me to continue to ask and seek answers to complicated questions about global affairs and environmental science. If anyone has questions about the Laidlaw Program, is interested in collaborating, or just wants to say hello, please feel free to email me at trisha.bhujle@gmail.com!
Youness Robert-Tahiri

Founder, HaHaHelps & MSocSci Psychology Candidate, University of Cape Town

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.
Sophia Brady (Previously: Waseem Khan)

Undergraduate, Durham University

Hi! I'm Sophia, an aspiring scientist and philomath. I love learning about everything and anything and delight in spending time with people who are passionate about the things they love! I am really interested and curious about how we can use chemistry to improve processes and products to help society. For example, my research project is looking into the possibility of turning struvite, a mineral which is a by-product of waste-water treatment processes into slow-release nitrogen and phosphorous fertilisers, which would be a green source nitrogen and phosphorous fertilisers and help achieve goals of zero-waste.  If you are researching something similar or are interested in learning more about the project, please reach out! I am super happy to talk about the project and meet other who are doing something similar and possibly collaborate!