Former Yeshivah student wins Cambridge scholarship
Yossi Frenkel was selected from a strong field of applicants from across the country.
University of Melbourne graduate Yossi Frenkel has been awarded a full Cambridge Australia Scholarship, the Allen STEM Scholarship, to undertake postgraduate study at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
The scholarship is highly competitive nationally, and Frenkel was selected from a strong field of applicants from across the country.
Frenkel will study a Master of Philosophy in Advanced Computer Science at Cambridge. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Melbourne, and before that attended Yeshivah College. Frenkel has also received the Rae and Edith Bennett Prestigious Travelling Scholarship to assist in his move to the UK.
Cambridge Australia Scholarships Masters Selection Committee chair Justin Sherwin said Frenkel had impressed the selection panel.
“Yossi stood out as an outstanding candidate with a remarkable academic and personal CV,” Sherwin said.
Frenkel said he had been inspired throughout his studies by his grandparents, who left school young but never lost their curiosity about the world around them. He said the Cambridge scholarship was also an opportunity to pursue research with real-world application, particularly in the field of artificial intelligence.
“My grandfather taught himself English from a dictionary on the boat to Australia after the war, and both of my grandparents had to leave school far too young to help provide for their families,” Frenkel said. “But they never lost their curiosity or their drive to learn – my grandmother went back and completed a university degree later in life. They showed me that curiosity is a real superpower, and it’s become an indelible part of me.
“Receiving the Cambridge Australia Allen STEM Scholarship is a tremendous honour, and one I hope to live up to. We’re in the early stages of a profound, AI-driven dislocation, and I don’t think we yet understand its full effects.
“I hope to apply mathematics and computer science to privacy-preserving machine learning, so that sensitive fields can benefit from these technologies without compromising people’s personal information.”