Frederick Balagadde is a research scientist in the Engineering Technologies Division at Lawrence Livermore National laboratory. He earned his Masters and PhD in applied physics from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California in 2007. Prior to joining Caltech, he attended high school at King’s College Budo in central Uganda. Having been ranked the best student in the 1996 'O'  level examinations –- the nation-wide, ten-subject-based equivalent of the SATs by the Ministry of Education, he enrolled into Manchester College in Indiana, USA, where he received his B.A. in  Physics and Computer Science in 2001.

As a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University, Frederick invented the micro-chemostat: a first-of-its-kind microfabricated fluidic system that mimics a biological cell culture environment in a highly complex web of tiny pumps and human-hair-sized water hoses, all controlled by a multi-tasking computer.

Frederick’s pioneering research has attracted significant interest in the scientific community, including a publication in Science (the leading scientific journal on original and multidisciplinary discoveries), several invited talks at prestigious conferences internationally, and was even aired on National Public Radio’s ‘All Things Considered’.

In 2002, Frederick together with his high school colleagues established an internet-based charity organization, Budonians International (BI) that gives scholarships to financially underprivileged students at his high school alma matter, King's College Budo. The success of BI's beneficiaries to-date looms large as a testament to his commitment to transform Uganda as a prototypical society through education, one life at a time, if necessary.