P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans

Thirty Outstanding Immigrants and Children of Immigrants Each Awarded $90,000 for Graduate School Studies in USA 

The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans program announces 2022 Fellows; More than 1,800 New American graduate students in the USA applied.

NEW YORK - Today, the board of directors of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, a merit-based graduate school program for immigrants and children of immigrants, announced the program’s 2022 Fellows. Chosen from a pool of over 1,800 applicants, the 30 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows were selected for their potential to make significant contributions to the United States. They will each receive up to $90,000 in funding to support their graduate studies.   

“Immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees are an essential part of the United States. The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows demonstrate the ingenuity and diverse perspectives that immigrants of all backgrounds bring to America’s graduate programs and to the country as a whole,” Fellowship Director Craig Harwood said of the new Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows. 

In addition to receiving up to $90,000 in funding for the graduate program of their choice, the 2022 Fellows join the prestigious community of past recipients. The active alumni network includes US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; Olympians Amy Chow and Patricia Miranda; US Ambassador to Spain Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón; Stanford AI leader Fei-Fei Li; computational biologist Pardis Sabeti; composer Paola Prestini; Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah; Aspiration CEO Andrei Cherny; award-winning writer Kao Kalia Yang, and more than 715 Fellows.

The 2022 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows:

• Christeebella Akpala - Immigrant from Nigeria, MD student at the Mayo Clinic 
• Mussab Ali - Immigrant from Pakistan, JD student at Harvard
• Anis Barmada -Immigrant from Syria, MD/PhD student in immunobiology at Yale
• Quenton Rashawn Bubb - Child of Grenadian immigrants, MD/PhD student in stem cell biology at Stanford
• Audrey Chen - Child of Taiwanese immigrants, DMA student in cello performance at the CUNY Graduate Center
• Patrick Collard - Child of immigrants from Mexico, PhD student in economics 
• Fernanda De La Torre - Immigrant from Mexico, PhD student in brain and cognitive sciences At MIT
• Oscar De Los Santos - Child of immigrants from Mexico, JD student at Harvard
• Andrea Alejandra Deleón Cruz - Immigrant from El Salvador, JD student at Yale
• Esther Elonga - Refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, MD/PhD student at Stanford
• Dave Epstein - Child of Israeli parents, PhD student in computer science at UC Berkeley
• Tania Fabo - Child of Cameroonian immigrants, MD/PhD student in medicine and genetics at Stanford
• Edward Friedman - Child of immigrants from the former Soviet Union (Moscow and Kyiv), JD student at Yale
• Rishi Goel - Child of Indian immigrants, MD student at the University of Pennsylvania
• Wenjie Gong - Immigrant from China, PhD student in physics at MIT
• Zubia Hasan - Immigrant from Pakistan, PhD student in physics at Harvard
• Tao Hong – Immigrant from China, PhD student in interdisciplinary material science at Vanderbilt
• Kingson Lin - Child of Chinese immigrants, MD/PhD student in experimental pathology at Yale
• Andrew Lu - Immigrant from Taiwan, MD/PhD student in biology at UCLA and Caltech
• Trang Luu - Immigrant from Vietnam, MBA/MS in engineering sciences and business at Harvard
• Arturo Macías Franco - Immigrant from Mexico, MSc student in statistics and data science and PhD student in animal and rangeland science at the University of Nevada, Reno
• Laura Nicolae - Child of Romanian immigrants, PhD student in business economics at Harvard
• Osaremen Fortune Okolo - Child of Nigerian immigrants, PhD student in the history of science at Harvard
• Syamantak Payra- Child of Indian immigrants, PhD student in electrical engineering at Stanford
• Alexander (Olek) Pisera - Child of Polish immigrants, PhD student in biomedical engineering at UC Irvine
• Sai Rajagopal - Immigrant from Canada, MD student at Harvard
• Katarina Richter-Lunn - Child of British and German immigrants, DDes student in architecture at Harvard
• Hari Srinivasan - Child of Indian immigrants, PhD student in neuroscience at Vanderbilt
• Laila Ujayli - Child of Syrian immigrants, JD student at Harvard
• Lawrence T. Wang - Child of Taiwanese immigrants, MD student at UC San Diego

Eligible New Americans include green card holders, naturalized citizens, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, individuals born abroad who graduated from both high school and college in the United States, and the US-born children of two immigrants.

The new class of Fellows have heritage in the following countries: Afghanistan, Cameroon, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, El Salvador, France, Germany, Grenada, India, Israel, Mexico, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Syria, Taiwan, Uganda, Ukraine, and Vietnam. 

The 2022 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows are studying a wide range of fields, including law, music, economics, architecture, business, physics, medicine, engineering, and agricultural studies. 

Founded by Hungarian immigrants, Daisy M. Soros and her late husband Paul Soros (1926-2013), The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans program honors the contributions of continuing generations of immigrants in the United States. 

“The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship liberated me from the traditional path I was expected to follow,” said 2009 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow Shantanu Gaur, the cofounder and CEO at Allurion Technologies. “Unburdened from debt and energized by peers who were taking the road less traveled, I have been able to thrive.” 

To read the full bios of the 2022 Fellows, visit www.pdsoros.org.

Individuals can learn more about the Fellowship, the current Fellows and the application, as well as sign up for the Fellowship’s e-mail list and an informational session webinar, at the program’s website: www.pdsoros.org.

2023 Application Now Open

The application for the 2023-24 academic year is now open and is due on Thursday, October 27, 2022 at 2:00 pm Eastern Time (ET). Selection criteria focuses on accomplishments that show creativity, originality, and initiative. The application is open to college seniors, students applying to graduate school, and those who are in the early stages of graduate school. All applicants must be planning to be enrolled full-time in an accredited graduate program in the US in the 2023-24 academic year. In addition, applicants must be 30 or younger as of the application deadline. Applicants can find full eligibility requirements here.

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