Two Penn affiliates named Soros Fellows, receiving up to $90,000 in graduate funding

The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans named two Penn affiliates Soros Fellows this year. 

Kingson Lin — who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 2017 from the School of Arts and Sciences — and Rishi Goel — a current second-year student in the Perelman School of Medicine — were among the fellowship’s 30 recipients. 

The fellowship program gives grants to immigrants or children of immigrants pursuing graduate education in the United States. Recipients of the fellowship were selected from a pool of 1,800 applicants to receive up to $90,000 in graduate funding.

“The purpose of the Fellowship is to provide opportunities for continuing generations of able and accomplished New Americans to achieve leadership in their chosen fields and to partake of the American dream,” according to the website. 

The son of two immigrant parents from Fujian, China, Kingson Lin was born in New York City and settled in the Philadelphia suburbs before attending Penn in 2013. At Penn, Lin worked in Professor Gary Molander’s chemistry lab, working with organic synthesis paradigms.

Lin works as a freshman mentor, tutor, residential adviser, and in the University of Pennsylvania College Achievement Program, PENNCAP, as a peer counselor. He graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2017, having earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and his master’s degree in organic chemistry. 

Lin is currently in his fifth year at Yale University, pursuing a joint M.D. and Ph.D. degree in experimental pathology. He is currently researching novel chemotherapeutics for drug-resistant brain cancers and has contributed to the discovery of a new chemotherapeutic agent. In light of his work, he and his research advisers co-founded a company to bring these new drugs to a clinical setting. 

Rishi Goel was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is the son of two immigrants from Lucknow, India. Before pursuing his medical degree at Penn, Goel earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry with a minor in applied statistics from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in immunology from the University of Oxford, and completed the National Institutes of Health’s Intramural Research Training Award Fellowship. 

At Penn, he is now a research fellow in E. John Wherry’s laboratory, in which he works to understand the immune responses to viral pathogens. His work has contributed to a better understanding of immune memory in the context of COVID-19 and mRNA vaccines. He also helped start the Immune Health Project at Penn, which aims to “lead the transformation of routine human immune profiling for impact across medical disciplines.”

He plans to graduate in 2024 and pursue a career as a physician-scientist working in immunology research to enhance the patient experience. 

Goel issued his gratitude on Twitter in response to the announcement: “Some personal news - honored to be selected as a 2022 @PDSoros fellow for my MD @Penn and join a community of New Americans working to build a better, more equitable society. Forever grateful to the mentors/community who have supported me along the way,” he tweeted. 

The other 28 2022 Fellows came from a wide range of immigrant and educational backgrounds; students pursuing Juris Doctors, Doctors of Musical Arts, PhDs, Doctors of Medicine, and Doctors of Design were among those announced on the Soros Fellows website. Other institutions on the list included MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.  

Penn students and affiliates have previously been named Soros Fellows, with several students receiving funding over the past 23 years. Applications for the 2023 Soros Fellowship are now open for eligible graduate students hoping to receive financial support.