The merit-based graduate school program for immigrants and children of immigrants announced the program’s 2022 Fellows chosen from a pool of more than 1,800 applicants

FREMONT, CA: The 30 winners of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans in 2022, a merit-based graduate school program for immigrants and children of immigrants, include four students of Indian ancestry. The 30 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows were chosen from a pool of over 1,800 applications for their ability to make substantial contributions to the United States, according to the New York-based foundation. They will each earn up to $90,000 to support their graduate studies, joining a distinguished group of over 715 previous recipients that includes US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Maine CDC Director Nirav Shah.

Syamantak Payra, pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford, is one of the four Indian American winners. Sai Rajagopal, a Harvard medical student, Rishi Goel, MD student at the University of Pennsylvania, and Hari Srinivasan, a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Vanderbilt, are the others.

Syamantak Payra grew raised in Houston, Texas, as the son of Indian immigrants. Building a robotic leg brace for his disabled instructor and organizing free literacy seminars and STEM outreach programs that reached almost a thousand poor youngsters across the Greater Houston Area are his proudest achievements. Payra's work has been published in several scientific journals, and he was recently inducted into the National Gallery of America's Young Inventors. Payra plans to pursue a Ph.D. in engineering to develop new biomedical technologies that will enable patients worldwide to live better lives.

Sai Rajagopal is a Tamil-speaking Canadian immigrant who grew up in both Canada and Tennessee. He studied gender rights, women, and sexuality studies, as well as biomedical engineering at Harvard College. Rajagopal worked with a team to build an electric rowing machine for paraplegic patients as a biomedical device designer and now focuses on designing safe penile prosthetics for transgender persons. Rajagopal hopes to work at the nexus of gender-affirming clinical treatment and policy. He continued his work in prosthetic device design after earning a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Srinivasan was born to Indian parents in the San Francisco Bay region. Srinivasan, a bright-eyed and outgoing child, was diagnosed with autism and ADHD at three. Srinivasan entered mainstream schooling thanks to a mix of alternate communication technology and a move to a charter school. Srinivasan majored in psychology and minored in disability studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Rishi Goel was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Indian immigrants from Lucknow. Goel was motivated as a child by his grandfather, a civil engineering professor, who instilled scientific curiosity and delight in routine household activities. Goel's latest research has led to new insights into the development of immunological memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection and mRNA vaccination, thanks to his recent work on understanding immune responses to viral infections. He was also involved in the development of Penn's Immunological Health Project, which aims to bring immune profiling into the clinic to improve illness diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.