UC Berkeley to Get a $35,000 Scholarship Fund in Honor of the Late Sushant Singh Rajput
- Marking his 35th birthday, her sister Shweta Singh Kirti instituted the fund in memory of the actor who is believed to have committed suicide last year.
In memory of late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput and on the occasion of his birth anniversary, his sister Shweta Singh Kirti has announced a $35,000 scholarship fund at UC Berkeley for physics students.
Celebrating the day as ‘Sushant day’, Kirti took to Twitter to announce the fund. “I am happy to announce that on 35th Birthday of Bhai, a step has been taken towards fulfilling one of his dreams. The Sushant Singh Rajput Memorial Fund of $35,000 has been set up in UC Berkeley. #SushantDay,” she tweeted.
Kirti also shared an old Instagram post by Sushant, in which he had talked about the kind of educational setup he wanted to create for students. “I dream to create an environment where kids of India— and elsewhere, get ‘free’, improved and relevant education and great many ways to acquire any skill of choice for free. To create a structure like this, and now, could be highly possible with right intentions and some working knowledge of chaos and game theories because as they say, the more we learn, the lesser time it takes for us to learn even more. Let’s begin. It’s about ‘time’,” his post had read.
Kirti shared details about the fund on UC Berkeley’s website. “The Sushant Singh Rajput Memorial Fund in Physics provides graduate student support in the Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley with a preference for students studying Astrophysics. Sushant Singh Rajput was born in India and passed on in June 2020. Alongside being a noted actor in mainstream Indian movies, he was a National Physics Olympiad winner and held a lifelong passion for astronomy and astrophysics,” it read.
UC Berkeley has the top astrophysics graduate program in the country, according to the National Research Council. According to campus physics department spokesperson Rachel Schafer, speaking to ‘The Daily Californian’, said that although Rajput did not have a direct connection to UC Berkeley, he shared a love of this discipline.
“The Sushant Singh Rajput Memorial Fund in Physics provides graduate student support in the Department of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley with a preference for students studying Astrophysics.”
“It’s going to be for one student per year and, maybe, for five years,” Schafer said. “It can be for a different student the next year, but the goal is to support one student each year for five years.”
Schafer said the fund is intended to partially cover expenses for the recipient. She also noted that while she has received many messages from students studying in India regarding the fund, the recipient must meet the preferences of the donor — namely, they must be a campus graduate student studying astrophysics.
The fund will be open to both international and domestic students applying to study Astrophysics at the university.
Schafer further noted that after the post was made, she received an outpouring of requests to contribute to this fund.
“After the fund was announced by the family a couple of days ago, we’ve received a lot of requests from people who want to donate,” Schafer told ‘The Daily Californian’. “The donation link is being set up right now. I think it should be set up within seven days.”
Sushant died on June 14, 2020 at the age of 34 of alleged suicide. He had made a name for himself in multiple films – ‘Kai Po Che’, ‘MS Dhoni: The Untold Story’, ‘Byomkesh Bakshi’ and ‘Sonchiriya’. His final film, ‘Dil Bechara’ was released posthumously in July, 2020.His death continues to be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).