Victor Roy, a second-year medical student and member of the Honors Program in Medical Education, received the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.
Each year, the fellowship honors and supports the graduate education of 30 naturalized citizens or first -generation Americans. Fellows are chosen on the basis of merit, and the selection process emphasizes creativity, originality, initiative, and sustained accomplishment.
As a fellow, Roy will travel to New York City in the fall to meet the rest of his class, graduate students from different academic fields and from all over the world.
“The fellowship provides us with an opportunity and a space to talk about how being an immigrant or a child of an immigrant is a part of shaping our lives and our experiences,” says Roy, who also recently received a Gates Scholarship. “I will be able to meet peers with diverse backgrounds and forge lifelong friendships through the conference in New York, in addition to building a network with an impressive and incredible community of fellows in Chicago and across the U.S.”
The fellowship was established for immigrants to share stories and provide inspiration for new Americans to accomplish their dreams. Roy’s parents saw the possibilities and opportunities that would be available for them and their children in the United States, and came here from a rural village in West Bengal, India.
Roy had known about the fellowship for several years, and reading the winners’ stories encouraged him to pursue his dreams. As a fellow, Roy says he hopes that his own story will inspire other new Americans to become the architects of their own future.