Seven Indian Americans Among 30 Recipients of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

Seven Indian Americans are among 30 recipients of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, a merit-based graduate school program for immigrants and children of immigrants who are pursuing graduate school here in the United States. Arjun Ramani, Devika Ranjan, Eshika Kaul, Jupneet Singh, Sreekar Mantena, and Vaithish Velazhahan were selected from more than 2,600 applicants. Each of the recipients was chosen for their potential to make significant contributions to the United States and will receive up to $90,000 in funding over two years, according to The Paul & Daisy Soros Foundation.

Arjun Ramani, of West Lafayette, Indiana, is pursuing a PhD in economics at MIT, where he studies technological change and innovation. He developed a dual interest in technology and the world from his parents, which led him to Stanford University, according to his Soros profile. There he studied economics as an undergraduate and pursued a master’s in computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence. A high school and college debater, he started the Stanford Open Data Project “to improve campus data transparency as data editor of the school’s newspaper,” his profile said. In college, he also spent time at the White House working on economic policy, in Ghana helping startups scale, and at Citadel in financial markets. His undergraduate thesis on the impact of remote work on cities won the Kennedy Prize for best undergraduate thesis in the social sciences. After graduation, Ramani became The Economist’s global business and economics correspondent. He first covered technology and finance, and later shifted to covering AI. In 2023, Ramani moved to India to cover the Indian economy in the lead-up to its election. He wrote or co-wrote six cover stories, was shortlisted for UK financial journalist of the year in 2024 for his AI and economics reporting, and co-authored a six-part special report on India’s economy.

Born in Nashik, India, and raised in various parts of the United States, Devika Ranjan is now a writer, educator, and theater-maker “who tells critical and creative stories about migration,” her Soros profile says. As associate director of Albany Park Theater Project in Chicago, Ranjan “worked with immigrant and first-generation teens to create ethnographic immersive theater about community issues like family separation, labor rights, and deportation,” her profile says. She has designed and taught original courses for the Theater and Performance Studies Department at Georgetown University; she has also been an invited lecturer at many universities. Ranjan studied culture and politics, with a minor in Arabic, at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. As a Marshall Scholar alumna, she holds a distinction from the University of Cambridge for her MPhil in sociology, where she did research on the electronic tagging of asylum-seekers.  She also has an MA in applied theatre from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she theorized about migration dramaturgy. She was an inaugural fellow at the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics from 2017-2019. Previously, she has been a global cultural fellow at the Institute for International Cultural Relations, University of Edinburgh, and a Projects for Peace Fellow with the Davis Foundation. 

Daughter of Kashmiri immigrants from India, Eshika Kaul was born and raised in New Jersey. She graduated summa cum laude from Wellesley College with a double major in economics and peace and justice studies. At Wellesley, she was “a leader in civic engagement, expanding service opportunities for students by establishing partnerships with local nonprofits,” according to her Soros profile. Her commitment to creating a positive change earned her the Harry S. Truman Scholarship. Kaul’s “interest in tax policy began when she worked alongside lawyers, accountants, and law students at the Harvard Legal Services Center Federal Tax Clinic to advocate for low-income taxpayers with IRS controversies,” her profile says. Her service experiences “fueled her academic interests, culminating in her economics thesis for which she received the Natalie Bolton Thesis Prize for Economic Policy,” per her profile. After graduating, she worked nationally on economic and tax policy at the White House, the Congressional Budget Office, and the United States Department of the Treasury. For her lifelong dedication to advocating for others, she recently received the Upstander Award from the global non-profit Facing History and Ourselves. 

Jupneet Singh graduated from MIT with a degree in chemistry and a concentration in history. While at MIT, she was the Commander (highest-ranked cadet) of the Air Force ROTC Detachment. While she is the first in her family to serve in the US armed services, she is carrying on a long Sikh military legacy. Immediately after commissioning as a 2nd Lt, her first assignment as an active-duty Air Force officer was the Rhodes Scholarship, making her the first woman Air Force ROTC Rhodes Scholar. She completed two degrees at Oxford — a master’s in public policy and a master’s in translational health sciences. She is pursuing an MD at Harvard Medical School’s Health Sciences Technology (HST) program under the Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP). She then plans to complete residency as an active-duty Air Force captain. Singh has worked in de-addiction centers in Punjab, as well as at the Ventura County Family Justice Center and Ventura County Medical Center Trauma Center. She received four fellowships for $8400 for Pathways to Promise, the program she founded to support the health of children affected by domestic violence. After serving as a surgeon in the Air Force, she hopes to enter the United States Public Health Commissioned Corps. 

Sreekar Mantena was raised in North Carolina and spent every summer of his childhood with his grandparents in Southern India, who instilled in him the importance of investing in one’s community and a love of learning. As an undergraduate at Harvard College, Mantena was inspired by the potential of statistics and data science to address gaps in healthcare delivery. He founded the Global Alliance for Medical Innovation, a nonprofit organization that has partnered with physicians in six countries to develop data-driven medical technologies for underserved communities, including devices to detect corneal disease. He has co-authored over 20 scientific publications. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College with a degree in statistics and molecular biology. He is currently pursuing training through the joint Harvard Medical School-MIT MD/PhD program, where he is a PhD student in biomedical informatics. In the future, he hopes to blend compassion with computation as a physician-scientist who harnesses the power of machine learning and statistics to advance equitable healthcare delivery.

Swathi Srinivasan was raised with an engineer’s fascination for understanding the world and an organic chemist’s passion for problem-solving. As a high school student, her curiosity led to her award-winning research on micronutrients in Indian spices and Alzheimer’s disease prevention. Her love for her home state and her introduction to a social theory course led her to pivot from neuroscience to social studies and the history of science. She conducted research on the overdose crisis response in Ohio and Portugal, and also explored health equity efforts through internships at various levels of government. Upon graduating, Srinivasan was selected as a Rhodes Scholar, where she completed an MPhil in history of science, medicine, and technology, researching U.S. involvement in South Africa’s HIV/AIDS response. After completing the MPhil, she received a year-long grant from the Rhodes Trust to document the global overdose response, which brought her to over fifteen countries in four continents.  Currently, she is an AmeriCorps Fellow in overdose prevention at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, where she supports unhoused people through harm reduction, health education, and case management.

Manhattan, Kansas-born Vaithish Velazhahan moved to the U.S. after growing up in India to pursue his dream of studying medicine. At Kansas State University, he found his passion for research. He conceived and took on an independent project to study how dietary flavonoids could help prevent cancer, which led to a first-authored manuscript. He also received the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and multiple NSF and NIH-funded grants. He pursued his PhD at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. There he developed new techniques to determine the first high-resolution structures of G protein-coupled receptors from fungi, culminating in two first-authored manuscripts published in the journal Nature and the Max Perutz Student Prize for outstanding PhD thesis. This work was featured on the cover page of Alberts’ Molecular Biology of the Cell, seventh edition textbook, and Trends in Pharmacological Sciences journal of CellPress. He was also elected a Fellow at Caius College, Cambridge, to establish an independent research program on GPCRs at the level of junior faculty, an honor bestowed upon four out of over 650 applicants annually.  He is currently pursuing MD training at Stanford, where he is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and conducts independent neuro-immuno-oncology research aimed at innovative therapeutic development. Passionate about global health access, he has worked with MEDLIFE in Peru and Ecuador and founded the nonprofit We Save in India, which develops technology to connect doctors with underserved patients.