Meet the Class of 2026 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows

An extraordinary community

The 2026 class is the most competitive in the Fellowship’s 28-year history, selected from more than 3,000 applicants—a new record. They represent 17 undergraduate institutions and 16 graduate programs across the country, from Hunter College to Harvard, from the University of Mississippi to MIT.

They are a physicist who discovered mathematics through YouTube, taught himself calculus, and made his way back to the US at thirteen. A blind pianist who performed at Carnegie Hall at eighteen. A daughter of farmworkers who grew up migrating across California’s Central Valley. A playwright who discovered theater through bootleg Broadway recordings. The son of a woman who fled China after Tiananmen Square, now developing gene-editing technologies already being used in clinical trials at UCSF. A scientist who built whole-genome blood tests for accessible screening of cancer.

They are pursuing degrees in fields as varied as nuclear science, computational chemistry, cognitive science, bioengineering, electrical engineering, ethnic studies, playwriting, and journalism—and what unites them is not just exceptional talent but a deep commitment to giving back to the United States.