Athena Pagon SEAS'23 named Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholar

The Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholars Program was established in February 2019 thanks to an extraordinarily generous donation from the David and Claudia Harding Foundation, the biggest single gift made to a university in the UK by a British philanthropist.

Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholarships provide outstanding PhD students with life-changing opportunities to research and study at the University of Cambridge. These fully funded Scholarships are available to the most talented students in any discipline, from all parts of the UK and the world.

Athena Pagon SEAS'23 is originally from Kingston, Jamaica. At Columbia, Athena majored in Biomedical Engineering and minored in Dance. Her undergraduate research in the Cellular Engineering Lab under Dr. Clark Hung involved optimizing the decellularization of donor synovium tissue to develop in vitro disease model scaffolds for studying Rheumatoid Arthritis. Athena joined the Simunovic Lab in October 2023 to explore new topics in biomedical research and combine her interests in tissue engineering and organogenesis. Her projects in her new lab involve studying developmental biology to further understand the development of the female reproductive system, as well as ways we can improve reproductive health using regenerative medicine techniques. At Cambridge, Athena will pursue a PhD in Stem Cell Biology.