Announcement

Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships Announce 2024 Class of Distinguished New Americans

April 16, 2024

Since 1998, 805 Fellows from 103 countries have been supported in their pursuit of higher education in the United States. Applications for the 2025-26 academic year are now open until October 31, 2024.

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 2024 Fellows. Selected from 2,323 applicants, the 30 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows are chosen for their achievements and their potential to make meaningful contributions to the United States across fields of study. They each will receive up to $90,000 in funding to support their graduate studies at institutions across the country. Read more about each 2024 Fellow and their heritage at www.pdsoros.org.

Since the Fellowship’s founding 26 years ago, the program has provided more than $80 million in funding, and recipients have studied a range of fields from medicine and the arts to law and business.

“As we welcome these impressive new Fellows to our community, I am filled with pride and hope for the bright futures they will have professionally and as they give back to our country. Their stories demonstrate the strength and vitality inherent in the immigrant identity—they aren’t afraid to take risks and think big,” Mrs. Daisy Soros, co-founder of the program, said. “Congratulations to the new Fellows.”

“Celebrating the exceptional cohort of 2024 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows for New Americans, we highlight the remarkable achievements and boundless potential of these outstanding individuals.” Each Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow embodies the spirit of resilience, innovation, and commitment to excellence that defines the immigrant experience. Together, they represent a diverse tapestry of backgrounds, perspectives, and aspirations, poised to make enduring contributions to their fields and communities. We are honored to support and empower these inspiring leaders as they continue their transformative journeys, enriching the fabric of American society and beyond,” said Fellowship Director Craig Harwood.

The new class of Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows have Canadian, Cambodian, Chinese, Colombian, Haitian, Hungarian, Indian, Iraqi, Japanese, Mexican, Burmese, Palestinian, Peruvian, Filipino, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sierra Leonean, South Korean, Vietnamese, and Zimbabwean heritage. They are studying a wide range of fields, including applied physics, architecture, biomedical science and engineering, biological engineering, business, biophysics, chemical engineering, chemistry, computational and system biology, creative writing, economics, education, English and African American studies, film, political science, health services research, law, literary reportage, machine learning and learning theory, medicine, physics, theater, and quantum computing.

The 2024 Fellows will be attending Brown University, California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Northwestern University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.

The 2024 Paul & Daisy Soros includes several firsts for the community:

The first Fellows to have heritage from Portugal, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe.
The first Fellows from undergraduate institutions including the University of Central Florida, University of Montana, University of Wisconsin – Whitewater, Texas State University, and Virginia Commonwealth University.
The first class of Fellows to include three Filipino Fellows, bringing the total number of Filipino Fellows to ten.

In addition to receiving up to $90,000 in funding for the graduate program of their choice, the 2024 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows join a distinguished community of past recipients. The alumni network includes US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who is the first surgeon general of Indian descent and helped lead the national response to Ebola, Zika, and the coronavirus; lawyer Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón, who serves as the US ambassador to Spain and Andorra; Damian Williams, who is the first Black US attorney for the southern district of New York and serves as chair of the attorney general’s advisory committee; and composer Paola Prestini, who was named by NPR as one of the “Top 100 Composers in the World” and plays on major stages across the world.

2025 Application Now Open

The application for the 2025-26 academic year is open and due by October 31, 2024. Selection criteria focuses on accomplishments that show creativity, originality, and initiative and 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 2025-26 academic year. In addition, applicants must be 30 or younger as of the application deadline.

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 US, and the US-born children of two immigrants. Full eligibility requirements can be found here.

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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.

For more information about the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships, visit pdsoros.org. Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn at: @PDSoros, and sign up for our newsletter.