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FAITH
Keeping the Faith ALUMNI DYLAN GRISWOLD CHS’11 SELECTED FOR GATES-CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARSHIP
“ My time
at Cathedral formed me as a student and as a Catholic,” wrote
Dylan Griswold, CHS ’11 when sharing a bit of recent news with our alumni office. With such a compelling statement, we couldn’t wait to hear more and learn about Dylan’s accomplishments and how he feels his faith and Catholic education informed his life’s decisions.
Dylan has been awarded the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in clinical neurosciences as a member of the 2019 Class of Gates Cambridge Scholars at the University of Cambridge. He is one of only 34 recipients selected from across the U.S. to participate in this highly-competitive program. He plans to take a break from medical school to pursue a PhD at Cambridge as a recipient of this significant honor. The Scholars-elect represent 37 universities and will study and research subjects ranging from cybersecurity, choral music, and technology biases to neurotrauma in low-resource settings and skeletal stem cells. In addition to outstanding academic achievement, the program places emphasis on social leadership in its selection process as its mission is to create a global network of future leaders committed to improving the lives of others.
An aspiring neurosurgeon, Dylan plans to use his Gates Cambridge Scholarship to research ways to improve neurosurgical techniques for traumatic brain injury, often referred to as TBI, in low-resource countries. In the future, he hopes to work with international governing bodies, such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO), ministries of health, community leaders, and local healthcare workers to address issues of health inequity and strengthen sustainable health systems around the world. “I decided to become a neurosurgeon while I was in Haiti,” says Dylan, who is a third-year medical student at Stanford University and visited the country on a service trip in 2014. “The lack of safe and affordable access to neurosurgical care was tremendous. When I arrived at Stanford, my first goal was to develop a global
My faith is the most important aspect of my life, and I can very much see myself serving as a Jesuit priest/physician.” – Dylan Griswold, CHS ’11
surgery program in the medical school.” For Dylan, setting goals and envisioning his future began to take shape very early on. “I’ve wanted to become a doctor since third grade,” he said. Upon graduating from Cathedral in 2011, he attended Williams College as a pre-med major
