May 14, 2021
Two Iranian-born women are among the 30 winners of Soros Fellowships this year.
The fellowships, worth up to $90,000 for reach winner, are granted to immigrants or the offspring of immigrants 30 or younger “who are poised to make significant contributions to US society, culture or their academic field.”
The two Iranian winners this year were both born in Iran.
Alaleh Azhir came to the US at 14 and triple majored in college before becoming a Rhodes Scholar. She is working on a medical degree at Harvard and MIT and is building computational tools for preventive care for women.
Nazanin Yeganeh Kazemi came to Kansas from Borujerd at the age of six after her parents won the Green Card lottery. She is now pursuing a medical degree in immunology at the Mayo Clinic. A Fulbright Scholar, she is studying the interaction between the placenta and the maternal immune system at Harvard/MIT. She founded a non-profit, Frappa, that mentors women in Iran to emigrate through the graduate school application process.
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships were set up 1997. The Soroses are immigrants from Hungary.
