BYU grad wins prestigious Gates Scholarship

PROVO — A 2001 graduate of BYU will take a two-year break from a medical residency at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to pursue a graduate degree at Cambridge University as one of 29 American winners of the prestigious Gates Scholarships.

Trevor Ellison is BYU's fourth Gates scholar since 2004. That puts the university in prestigious company, tied in 14th place with Brown and other schools and ahead of Duke and Georgia Tech, which each have had three winners.

Ellison said he will spend his two years at Cambridge establishing a permanent surgical relief program in developing nations. Current programs send skilled surgeons on service missions for a few weeks at a time but don't provide long-term health care for those living in Third World countries.

"There are a lot of people in medicine interested in international work," Ellison said, but vacation and work schedules limit the number who can participate. "It holds people back."

As a result, the current practice of one- to two-week medical missions of mercy can't provide follow-up exams or handle complications from difficult procedures.

The scholarship, patterned after the Rhodes scholarship, which sends winners to Oxford, was established by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to cover a Cambridge master's degree for students who demonstrate "intellectual ability, leadership capacity and desire to use their knowledge to contribute to society throughout the world."

Ellison's dream is to set up a model for medical schools to establish sister institutions in developing counties where medical residents could serve one- to two-month residencies paid for by the university. Cycling residents through the hospital would provide the long-term medical service for those living in the country and give medical students valuable overseas experience.

"While working on my MBA at Cambridge, I will have all the resources there to figure out how to set up a great model," he said. "My goal is to get one up and running in whatever country we want to go to, either by next year or the year after that."

Ellison, who graduated cum laude with university honors in biology from BYU, has since earned a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, where he is pursuing a medical residency and a Ph.D. in economic evaluation and policy. He hopes to practice medicine as a surgical oncologist when he completes his education, but with degrees in various disciplines, he hopes to do more.

"I want to be involved in international services throughout my career," he said. "On the side, I will do research and carry out economic evaluations on how to improve health care delivery."