Trustees

Nick Nicolaou (Chair of Trustees)

Nick Nicolaou is an Associate Professor (Teaching) and co-Departmental Undergraduate Tutor for the Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCL. As part of the AMOPP research group at UCL, Nick was awarded his PhD in Physics, studying linear and non-linear excited state dynamics in novel optical chromophores. He then worked as a Research Associate for five years, collaborating with Cancer Research UK, Illumina Inc’ and The National Heart and Lung Institute. In 2013, Nick switched to a teaching focused career within higher education and has since led on a number of widening participation initiatives. He is currently the Departmental Lead for In2Research and is also developing an international scholarship programme with the Department of Physics, University of Liberia.

Daniel Gradeci

Daniel was born in Albania and moved to the UK as a child and grew up in east London. He went to study Theoretical Physics at UCL graduating in 2015 and then went on to do a PhD in Theoretical Biophysics under the supervision of Prof. Guillaume Charras at UCL and LCN, where he studied the dynamics of cell competition. After graduating from his PhD, Daniel left academia to become a quant at a hedge fund. He has been actively involved in the charity from its inception, organising events, running workshops, classes and more crucially supporting young stars. In his spare time he enjoys playing football and is a massive Man Utd fan.

Sara Abbasi

Sara is a financial services professional, currently working at IHS Markit (which is in the process of being merged with S&P Global) within the field of corporate governance advisory. She has a background in journalism and communications, and she has used this experience to assist Bridging the Future with their marketing materials and branding. Sara’s interests include education, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and sustainability within the finance and fashion industries.

Jack O’neil (Treasurer)

Jack O’neil is an actuary at the Government Actuary’s Department in London, working on pension scheme valuations and reserving for the NHS resolution fund. He is looking forward to using his financial services experience to assist the charity.

Advisors

Raphaëla Armbruster

Raphaëla Armbruster is the Coordinator of Admissions for UCL’s International Foundation course at pre-undergraduate level, the Undergraduate Preparatory Certificate (UPC). She designed the Bowman Scholarship, which launched in March 2021 and offers two students from forced migration backgrounds a full tuition fee waiver to join the UPC, on either the Sciences and Engineering or the Humanities and Social Sciences pathway and then access UG studies at top UK universities. Since 2016, she has been involved in the Refuge in a Moving World Education network and in several projects at UCL (Pathways to Education for Women Migrants, We Are Movers, Science and English Summer School). She has also worked as an educational mentor for Refugee Education UK.
She studied Poetry and Sociolinguistics at the Sorbonne University in France and her postgraduate research focused on the acquisition of bi- and multilingualism in international school contexts.