The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, founded by Paul Soros and Daisy Soros in 1997, is a United States postgraduate fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants.[1][2] In 2021, the Fellowship received 2,445 applications and awarded 30 Fellowships for a selection rate of 1.2%.[1][3] Each Fellow receives up to $90,000 in funding toward their graduate education, which can be in any field and at any university at the US. The Fellowship, which honors the contributions of immigrants to the US, was founded in 1997.[4] In 2010, the couple had contributed a total of $75 million to the organization's charitable trust.[5][6]
Past fellows include United States Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy (1998 Fellow), the second-youngest Surgeon General to occupy the position, as well as the first of Indian descent.[7] Other alumni include Iranian-American Ebola researcher Pardis Sabeti (2001 Fellow) and Fei-Fei Li (1999 Fellow), a Stanford professor and artificial intelligence expert.
The Fellowship has no restrictions based on field of study, and has supported graduate students in public policy, science, medicine, business, law, music, arts, humanities, and the social sciences. Applicants can be pursuing master's degrees, PhDs, JDs, MDs, MPHs, MD/PhDs, and other joint degrees, etc. [8]
About the Fellowship[]
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans supports up to two years of graduate study in any field at any advanced degree-granting program in the United States. Each Fellow receives up to $25,000 a year in stipend support and up to $20,000 per year tuition support, allowing Fellows to receive as much as $90,000 over two years.[1][9] Fellows attend two Fall Conferences in New York City designed to introduce the Fellows to one other and to examine their New American experience.[10]
Mission[]
The Fellowship provides opportunities for continuing generations of able and accomplished New Americans to achieve leadership in their chosen fields and to partake of the American dream. The program was established in recognition of the contributions New Americans have made to American life, and in gratitude for the opportunities the United States afforded by Hungarian immigrants to the United States, Paul and Daisy Soros.
Selection criteria[]
The Fellowship looks for applicants who have:
- Demonstrated creativity, originality and/or initiative
- Sustained accomplishment
- Promise of future significant contributions
- Planned graduate trainings is relevant future goals
- Commitment to Constitution and Bill of Rights
Eligibility[]
New American Status: If an applicant was born abroad as a non-US citizen, then they must have been naturalized, be a green card holder, be adopted, or be a DACA recipient. As of 2020, anyone, regardless of documentation, who was born abroad and graduated from both high school and college in the US is eligible. For all applicants, regardless if they were born in the US or abroad, the parents must have been born abroad as non-US citizens unless the applicant grew up in a single-parent home.
Academic Standing: To be eligible, applicants must be entering graduate school or in the first two years of graduate school as of the application deadline. If a student is a PhD student, the Fellowship considers the master's part of the PhD. Fellows must be enrolled in full-time graduate studies during the first year of the Fellowship.
Age: Applicants cannot have reached or passed their 31st birthday as of the application deadline. The Fellowship makes no exceptions.[10]
Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship recipients[]
Over 700 students have been recipients of The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, as of 2021,[10] including
- Derrick Ashong, music entrepreneur
- Lera Auerbach, composer
- Andrei Cherny, founder of Aspiration
- Amy Chow, physician, surgeon & former Olympic gymnast
- Eric Ding, epidemiologist, health economist, and COVID19 whistleblower[11]
- Abdul El-Sayed, author, former health commissioner of Detroit, former professor
- Tali Farhadian, former federal prosecutor and current candidate for New York County District Attorney
- Ron Huberman, Chicago education leader
- Cyrus Habib, lawyer, former lieutenant governor of Washington state, former state senator in Washington
- Nadine Burke Harris, California Surgeon General, doctor, author, and toxic stress expert
- Rashad Hussain, US special envoy and coordinator for strategic counterterrorism communications
- Sachin H. Jain, CEO of the CareMore Health System
- Vikram Sheel Kumar, engineer, physician and entrepreneur
- Fei-Fei Li, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and the Stanford Vision Lab
- Lei Liang, composer
- Mehret Mandefro, film/television producer, writer, and founder of the multimedia production company A51 Films
- Patricia Miranda, lawyer and former Olympic wrestler
- Vivek Murthy, former US Surgeon General (Obama administration), current US Surgeon General (Biden administration)
- Parag Pathak, MIT economist
- Salvador Plascencia, writer
- Paola Prestini, composer, cofounder and artistic director of National Sawdust and founder of VisionIntoArt
- Vivek Ramaswamy, founder of Roivant
- Julissa Reynoso, chief of staff to Dr. Jill Biden and former US Ambassador to Uruguay
- Pardis Sabeti, computational biologist, medical geneticist and evolutionary geneticist
- Sanjena Sathian, novelist
- Nirav D. Shah, director of Maine CDC, former director of Illinois Department of Health
- Jeff Sheng, artist, photographer & LGBT activist
- Anthony Veasna So, writer
- Konstantin Soukhovetski, pianist
- Jeannie Suk, Harvard Law professor
- Kao Kalia Yang, Hmong American writer and author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir
- Yung Wook Yoo, pianist and composer
- Pelkins Ajanoh, inventor and entrepreneur
References[]
- ^ a b c "Seven Yale affiliates awarded Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans". Yale Daily News. April 27, 2021.
- ^ "About". pdsoros.org.
- ^ "Meet the Class of 2021". pdsoros.org.
- ^ Bumiller, Elisabeth (June 17, 1998). "PUBLIC LIVES; An Overshadowed Altruist Sees the Light". The New York Times. New York, NY. Retrieved September 18, 2015.
- ^ Strasburg, Jenny (June 30, 2010). "Endowment Gets $25 Million Boost". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Hershey Jr., Robert D. (June 13, 2013). "Paul Soros, Shipping Innovator, Dies at 87". The New York Times. New York, NY. Retrieved September 18, 2015.
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ "College Money Available for Immigrants". U.S. News & World Report. New York. February 2, 2012. Retrieved September 18, 2015.
- ^ a b c "The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans". pdsoros.org.
- ^ New York Mag. "Why Was It So Hard to Raise the Alarm on the Coronavirus?".
- Fellowships