IAS Friends and Fellows Coffee Morning

On Tuesday 6th October we will be hosting an IAS Friends and Fellows Coffee Morning, where we will welcome current IAS Residential Fellow Wangui Maina and Open Programme Fellow Assistant Professor Amit Kumar Singh.

Please feel free to book using the button below, to come along and join us for an informal in-person gathering at International House with coffee and cakes to meet our Fellows, all are welcome.

Wangui Maina, Finding Me Community

Wangui Maina is the Founder and CEO of Finding Me Community (FMC), a youth-led organisation embedding preventive, peer-led mental health systems across 33 public universities in East and Central Africa. Her work sits at the intersection of public health, higher education, community psychology, and African philosophy, advancing SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 4 (Quality Education) through culturally grounded, student-owned models of care.

Wangui's leadership is rooted in lived experience. While studying economics at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, she experienced severe anxiety within a structurally overwhelmed counselling system one of four counsellors serving over 30,000 students. That encounter with institutional failure became the foundation of her life's work.

During their IAS Fellowship, Wangui will be collaborating with Dr Jessica Robles from the Department of Communication and Media.

Assistant Professor Amit Kumar Singh, Indian Institute of Technology Patna

Dr Amit Kumar Singh received his Ph.D. degree from the Centre of Applied Research in Electronics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India, in 2018. He is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Patna, India.

He was Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Jammu, India from March 2020 to February 2022. From November 2018 to February 2020, he was a Post-doctoral Researcher with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South Korea. Dr Singh is a recipient of Young Scientist Award-2021 for Excellence in Research by the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) USA in July 2021. He has authored or co-authored more than 40 international journal papers and 45 conference papers.

During their IAS Fellowship, Assistant Professor Singh will be collaborating with Dr Aakash Bansal from the School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering.