Six Indians win Soros fellowship award

Six Indian-Americans are among 31 students chosen for the prestigious fellowship for immigrants or children of immigrants.

The 2009 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship entitles the students to receive a grant of USD 20,000 and a tuition grant of one-half the tuition cost of the US graduate programme attended by the Fellow.

Ashish Agrawal (22),a student the University of California has led two volunteer programmes. While,Chitra Akileswaran (26) a student at Harvard Medical School plans to work for health finance programmes in poor countries.

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Tarun Chhabra (28) has a PhD in international relations at Oxford. While,Shantanu Gaur,22 year-old first-year medical student at Harvard Medical School,recently solved a major problem in the field of cell biology. Sushma Sheth (29),a graduate of Brown University with focus in development studies and the sixth person of Indian origin to get the fellowship Previn Warren (26) is a first-year student at Harvard Law School.

The 2009 Soros Fellows,ranging from 21 to 30 years of age,were selected from nearly 750 applicants from 266 undergraduate and 137 graduate institutions.

“Our criteria are designed to identify people who will make a success of their lives and who will contribute something to this country,in whatever area of endeavour they choose,” Soros said in a statement.