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UCL undergraduates chosen as Millennium Fellows 2022–23

26 September 2022

A total of 10 UCL undergraduate students have been chosen as Millennium Fellows 2022–23 to help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – with UCL the only UK university to have its students selected as part of the global fellowship.

L-R (top) Antara Basu, Sorana Bucseneanu, Suzanna Chen, Abigail Hunt, Laura Ionescu. L-R (bottom) Kushagr Nigam, Judah Purwanto, David Simon, Udit Singhal, Iben Vagle

Run by the Millennium Campus Network (MCN) and United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), the Millennium Fellowship Scheme is an international leadership development programme through which undergraduate students help to further the SDGs in their communities.

The 2022–23 UCL Millennium Fellows are:

  • Antara Basu (UCL Political Science)
  • Sorana Bucseneanu (UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society)
  • Suzanna Chen (UCL Arts & Sciences)
  • Abigail Hunt (UCL Political Science)
  • Laura Ionescu – Campus Director (UCL Political Science)
  • Kushagr Nigam (UCL Laws)
  • Judah Purwanto (UCL Political Science)
  • David Simon – Campus Director (UCL Science & Technology Studies)
  • Udit Singhal (UCL School of Management)
  • Iben Vagle (UCL Laws)

More than 30,000 students from around 2,400 campuses worldwide applied to join the Class of 2022, with 3,000 fellows chosen to take part.

UCL secured the most Millennium Fellows of any UK university for the third year running.

The selective Fellowship is a semester-long leadership development program that convenes, challenges, and celebrates student leadership to help achieve UN goals. As part of the application process, students propose a project they will undertake during the scheme, which runs annually from August to December.

Successful applicants form cohorts on their campus, meeting throughout their tenure to share best practice on their individual projects or work together on larger initiatives. Coordinating these efforts this year are David Simon and Laura Ionescu, who were chosen as UCL’s Campus Coordinators,

During her fellowship, Laura will be addressing SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) through a civic education program aimed at high school and university students in Eastern Europe. She is currently developing relationships with organisations that offer similar programmes in Romania – her home country – as well as Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary, Moldova and Poland.

Laura said: “I want to raise awareness about peace and justice and presenting possible opposition and solution tactics for dealing with corrupt institutions.

“I aim to partner with NGOs such as România Curată – the country’s academic society and oldest think tank – which is already producing civic education materials, while also curating some resources such as interactive workshops and videos myself.”

David’s project is supporting SDG 6 (Clean Water & Sanitation) through developing a Student-Operated Mobile Sanitation Unit. This will help to clean and sanitise pedestrian walkways around UCL’s campus and the local community, which suffer contamination from garbage and other human and animal waste.

Other projects being undertaken by this year’s cohort include Glass2Sand, which is reducing the number of glass bottles dumped in Landfill in India by crushing them into silica sand, and Portihome, a student-student text service to help UCL students feel safer walking home from campus to their accommodation in the evenings.

Simon Knowles, UCL’s Head of Coordination (SDGs) said: “The repeated success of our students is testament to the importance the student community place on the SDGs and their enthusiasm for addressing them.

“I congratulate the Fellows on their success and wish them luck with their projects over the coming year. I look forward to seeing how they contribute to achieving the SDGs.”

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Caption: L-R (top) Antara Basu, Sorana Bucseneanu, Suzanna Chen, Abigail Hunt, Laura Ionescu. L-R (bottom) Kushagr Nigam, Judah Purwanto, David Simon, Udit Singhal, Iben Vagle.