On April 17th, The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, a merit-based graduate school program for distinguished immigrants and children of immigrants, announced their class of 2024 Fellows. This year, 30 applicants were selected from a pool of more than 2,300 applicants. Each will be awarded up to $90,000 in funding to support their studies at the nation’s top institutions.

This year the program honored six Fellows of Indian – American heritage. They include:

KEERTHANA HOGIRALA
MBA/MPP at the University of Chicago
Emigrated from India at age 6; UIUC graduate; former public school teacher; guided pandemic response and operations for DC’s schools; building integrated systems of essential services.

SHUBHAYU BHATTACHARYAY
MD at Harvard
Emigrated from India as a child; Johns Hopkins graduate; coinvented hearing devices for people with dementia; using AI to improve the precision & global accessibility of brain injury care.

MALAVIKA KANNAN
MFA in fiction
Child of Indian immigrants; first novel published in 2023; writing on identity published nationally; senior at Stanford; writing queer brown girls into the narrative.

ANANYA AGUSTIN MALHOTRA
JD at Yale
Child of Indian and Filipino immigrants; Princeton graduate; working in foreign policy with a focus on nuclear disarmament.

AAYUSH KARAN
PhD in quantum science & engineering at Harvard
Child of Indian immigrants; Harvard graduate; designed folding algorithms for RNA sequences and factual correctors for large language models; pursuing classical and quantum computational learning

AKSHAY SWAMINATHAN
MD/PhD in biomedical data science at Stanford
Child of Indian immigrants; Harvard graduate; built a primary care clinic in Bolivia; deploys AI tools within health systems; polyglot and author of five books on language learning.

The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans celebrates the extraordinary achievements of immigrants and the children of immigrants. Every year, 30 exceptional individuals receive awards empowering them to pursue their graduate studies in the field of their choosing. In its 26 year history, the program has provided more than $80 million in
funding and honored 805 Fellows, fostering a legacy of excellence and diversity.

These new Fellows join the ranks of notable alumni like US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, President and CEO of SCAN Health Group and SCAN Health Plan Sachin Jain (who is also a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships Board member).

Other notable Indian-American alumni include the President & Chief Executive of Alameda Health Medical Group Chitra Akileswaran, Physician-Scientist Aadel Chaudhuri, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Technology and National Security of the National Security Council Tarun Chhabra, Co-Founder and CEO of Catapult Ankur Luthra, Co-Founder and CEO of Radix Health Arun Mohan, award-winning writer Sanjena Sathian, and the CDC’s Principal Deputy Director Nirav Shah, Yale Law Professor Anika Singh Lemar.

Founded by Hungarian immigrants and American philanthropists Daisy M. Soros and her late husband Paul Soros in 1998, the program has provided more than $80 million in funding and awarded more than 800 Fellows from 105 countries fellowships to pursue the graduate degrees of their choosing. Learn more at www.pdsoros.org

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