MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science alumnus Allen Lin ’11, MEng ’11 is one of five MIT students featured by MIT News as recipients of the 2015 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.
Read more in the April 21, 2015 MIT News Office article by Nora Delaney, GECD: Global Education, titled "Four MIT graduate students and an alumnus are among 30 new recipients nationwide of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. Recipients, all immigrants or children of immigrants, win $90,000 apiece to support graduate studies," posted in part, below.
The four current or incoming MIT graduate students who have won Soros Fellowships are Stephanie Speirs, whose mother emigrated from Korea, and who will pursue an MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management; Yakir Reshef, from Israel, and Andre Shomorony, from Brazil, both of whom are currently enrolled in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) program; and Krzysztof Franaszek, from Poland, who will enroll in HST this spring.
Alumnus Allen Lin ’11, MEng ’11, whose parents are Taiwanese immigrants, will use his Soros Fellowship to pursue a PhD in systems biology at Harvard University.
The Soros Fellowships, established in 1997, award $90,000 for immigrants and children of immigrants to complete graduate studies in the United States. Applicants may propose graduate work in any discipline, and are selected for their potential to make significant contributions to American society, culture, or their academic field.
This year’s 30 winners were selected from a pool of 1,200 applicants. Including this year’s winners, 18 MIT students and alumni have won Soros Fellowships since 2010.
Alumnus Allen Lin, whose parents emigrated from Taiwan, grew up in New Jersey. He came to MIT with an interest in complex systems; as an undergraduate, he immersed himself in the study of synthetic biology, computer science, technology policy, and public health.
In 2011, Lin was named a Marshall Scholar; as an MIT undergraduate, he also received a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and a Department of Homeland Security Scholarship for his research. (See the 2011 announcement.)
Lin holds three degrees from MIT, all awarded in 2011: a bachelor’s in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), and in biological-chemical engineering, and a master’s in EECS. Following his graduation, Lin’s Marshall Scholarship allowed him to complete an MPhil in technology policy at Cambridge University, followed by an MS in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The Soros Fellowship will support Lin’s PhD studies in systems biology at Harvard. His research focuses on developing cost-effective vaccines and treatments for infections, particularly HIV, that disproportionally affect marginalized populations.
News Image:
