Incoming Harvard Medical School student Sai Rajagopal has been named a 2022 fellow of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Rajagopal is one of 30 fellows chosen from a pool of over 1,800 applicants for the fellowship that recognizes immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate degrees.
An immigrant from Canada, Rajagopal grew up in Tennessee and attended Harvard College, studying women, gender, and sexuality studies and biomedical engineering. Rajagopal went on to earn a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where they worked on prosthetic device design.
Rajagopal then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a master’s degree in South Asian Studies. After completing their master’s degree, Rajagopal earned an MBA at Oxford’s Saïd Business School. While taking classes remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rajagopal co-founded the Bridging Borders Project, a radio and online policy platform that sought to bring together global leaders to exchange COVID-19 health care policy insights.
Rajagopal will begin classes at HMS this fall. They hope to become a gender-affirming care surgeon after graduating from HMS and to convey in the media the science of gender-affirming care.
Recipients of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship are chosen for their potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture, or their academic fields. Fellows receive $90,000 in funding over two years.
This year’s 2022 fellows include green card holders, naturalized citizens, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, individuals born abroad who graduated from both high school and college in the United States, and the U.S.-born children of two immigrants.
Founded by Hungarian immigrants Daisy M. Soros and her late husband, Paul Soros, the fellowship program honors the contributions of continuing generations of immigrants in the United States.
