The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships For New Americans announced the class of 2017 recipients , with two members of the first and third VPL class respectively, Shivani Radhakrishnan and Mariana Olaizola, among them.

About the Fellowship
The 30 new Fellows are all immigrants or the children of immigrants. They will each receive up to $90,000 in funding for the graduate program of their choice. In addition, each new Fellow will join the prestigious community of recipients from past years, which includes US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, leading Ebola researcher Pardis Sabeti, Aspiration founder Andrei Cherny, and nearly 600 other New American leaders. This year was our most competitive year ever: we received 1,775 applications for just 30 Fellowships. The Fellows were selected for their potential to make significant contributions to US society, culture, or their academic field. At a time when immigration is being so fiercely contested, our Fellowship is working to put the spotlight on the brilliance of immigrants from all socioeconomic backgrounds, countries, and circumstances—we are a nation of immigrants and we are all the better for it. We hope you’ll join us in sharing this message.

The Princeton homepage story profiles all five Princeton recipients, which also includes three Ph.D. students.

For full bios of the recipients and infographics about the class, click here.