Today, The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants, announced their 2015 recipients. The thirty recipients, called “Fellows”, were selected for their potential to make significant contributions to US society, culture, or their academic field, and were selected from a pool of 1,200 applicants.

One of the winners and the only Indian American to win this year is Paras Singh Minhas, a student at the Stanford School of Medicine.

“I admire the Fellows’ ambition, accomplishments and work ethic,” said Daisy M. Soros, who co-founded the Fellowship program in 1997 with her late husband, Paul Soros (1926-2013). “They underscore the importance of New Americans to this country.” The couple, Hungarian immigrants, contributed $75 million to the organization’s charitable trust.

In addition to receiving up to $90,000 in funding for the graduate program of their choice, each new Fellow will join the prestigious community of recipients from past years, which includes US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, leading Ebola researcher Pardis Sabeti, Oscar health insurance co-founder Kevin Nazemi and over 500 other New American leaders.

“It is extraordinary to see all that these Fellows have already accomplished,” said Craig Harwood, who directs the Fellowship program. “Whether they are in the sciences, music, medicine, law or education, it is clear that this group of individuals will have a tremendous impact on their respective fields, and on life in this country.”

The 2015 class of Fellows includes researchers, mathematicians, writers, scientists, translators, musicians, entrepreneurs and future doctors and lawyers, as well as the first-ever Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow in the field of nursing. 

The 2015 cohort of Fellows is extremely diverse in terms of family heritage, field of study and New American status:

• 16 are female; 14 are male.
• The youngest Fellow is 21; the oldest is 30. The average age is 26.
• 22 were born abroad; 8 were born in the US.
• 2 are DACA recipients; 5 are green card holders; 15 are naturalized citizens.
• 13 Fellows are pursuing medicine; 7 natural science; 4 law; 3 music, visual and/or performing arts; 2 computer science; 2 business; 1 social science and 1 education. 3 Fellows are currently pursuing more than 1 degree.
• 14 are first-generation college graduates; 10 are first-generation high school graduates.
• The Fellows attended a total of 23 undergraduate institutions, and will attend a total of 14 graduate schools.