09/10/2026
Third year Donaghey Scholar Syed Azfar Rahman traveled to the UK for his study abroad experience. Here is his description in his own words.
"This summer, I travelled to the UK as part of the International Summer Program at the University of Cambridge. I had the privilege of studying data science, AI, and biology under the guidance of world-class professors. Beyond my subjects, I also attended many lectures, some about searching for life in the Universe and others about the might-have-beens of history. Throughout my program, I met exceptional people from many countries and continents.
Exploring the quaint city of Cambridge, I saw places where Nobel laureates got drunk celebrating the discovery of the structure of DNA, labs where the electron was discovered, and other historically rich buildings. My dorm building itself was over 200 years old, which is relatively new for Cambridge. Punting down the River Cam (a way of travelling by boat in which you push off the riverbed using a long pole), I saw chapels that were more than 500 years old, still standing in all their Gothic glory. It felt surreal walking the same streets that Newton did, wandering the botanical garden where Darwin's specimens lie, and studying in the same building where scientists discovered how neurons work. My visit was also filled with museums; overall, I recall visiting nearly ten different museums: museums about telescopes, globes, fossils, rocks, human history, natural history, art history, and ships that voyaged to Antarctica, among others.
I also took the opportunity to explore different cities, travelling to London, Oslo, and Munich. I saw a Big clock tower named Ben, old houses where influential people once lived, fjords that jut out into the sea, forts that sank N**i ships, and I rode cable cars up to the heights of the Alps. I arrived in Cambridge expecting to study data science, AI, and biology. I left with all of that and with something more: a sense of having briefly stepped into a story of discovery centuries in the unfolding, told by the buildings and the culture that remain."
