Five Indian American win Soros Fellowship for 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
http://www.zeenews.com/nrinews207553.html
Five Indian American students have won the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships, worth USD 90,000 for over two years for New Americans.
Samir Mayekar, Aadel Chaudhuri, Deepa Galaiya, Vivek Ramaswamy and Shankar Sarkar are the recipients of the fellowship.
Mayekar, of Houston, worked on the Obama for America campaign as its Budget manager, managing about USD 600 million in campaign contributions and assisted the chief financial officer in operating the first major presidential campaign to exist outside the public financing system.
After Obama's victory, he joined the transition team and eventually served as National Security Director in the White House's Presidential Personnel Office, where he managed the selection process for presidential appointees at all national security agencies.
Presently, he is the deputy chief of staff at the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Chaudhuri, 28, born in California and currently finishing his Ph D in biology at California Institute of Technology, focuses his research on small RNAs in cancer and the immune system, and has been supported by a Howard Hughes Medical Research Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Graduate research fellowship.
As an undergraduate at MIT, Chaudhuri completed two BS degrees, in electrical engineering and computer science, and biology.
Galaiya, 24, is currently on a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellowship.
Ramaswamy, 25, of Cincinnati, graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 2007, majoring in biology.
He was chairman of the Harvard Political Union and served as one of three undergraduates chosen for an advisory board to select the current president of Harvard.
Sarkar, 25, born in Morristown, New Jersey, had attended Harvard, where he earned undergraduate degrees in applied mathematics and statistics and won election to Phi Beta Kappa. In India, he has worked as a researcher on educational census, gender empowerment, and anti-sex trafficking projects with local NGOs.
Each year, 30 students are chosen for the prestigious awards.
The Soros, who are Hungarian immigrants, established the awards in 1997 with a trust of USD 50 million, to highlight the contributions of new immigrants to the country.
The fellowships are given to students pursuing graduate degrees and are unrestricted with regards to field or university; this year's 30 fellows were chosen from more than 1,000 applicants.
