Ivan Kuznetsov, an M.D./Ph.D. student in the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science, and alumna Roxana Moussavian, of the School of Arts and Sciences, have been awarded the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a graduate-school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States.   
                                                                                                                                        Kuznetsov and Moussavian, who were among 1,775 applicants, were chosen for their potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture or their academic field. Each will receive as much as $90,000 in funding over two years for the graduate program of his or her choice.    
                                                                                                                                           Kuznetsov’s work is supported by the National Institutes of Health through the Medical Scientist Training Program. His research focuses on the computationally driven design of new proteins with functions not found in nature, which could potentially be applied to a variety of medical tasks.
                                                                                                                                                      The son of Russian immigrants, Kuznetsov was born in Columbus, Ohio, where his father held a one-year postdoctoral research position. Due to visa restrictions, the family had to leave the U.S. when he was two months old. He spent his early years living in Russia and Austria, returning to the U.S. at age 4 when his parents were offered academic jobs in Raleigh, N.C. Kuznetsov received his bachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering and applied math and statistics from Johns Hopkins University.
                                                                                                                                                         At Hopkins, Kuznetsov conducted neuroscience research, exploring new ways of delivering drugs into the brain, creating algorithms for the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders from brain images and exploring new computational models of how neuronal synapses in the brain are maintained. As an undergraduate, he published 18 papers, most as the first author, in peer-reviewed journals. For his research, he was awarded the Barry Goldwater Scholarship. He was also named an Amgen Scholar and selected as a participant in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Summer Institute.
      
Penn alumna Roxana Moussavian is an entrepreneur, policy adviser and storyteller. Born in upstate New York and raised in California, she is the daughter of Iranian immigrants. Inspired by her family, she is passionate about increasing access to economic opportunity and social empowerment, both domestically and abroad. She is currently studying at Yale Law School. After completing her degree, she plans to continue to focus on effecting changes that help more people realize their full potential.      
                                                                                                                                                  While an undergraduate at Penn studying the modern Middle East and math, she co-founded a nonprofit that helps students from around the world obtain quality education by connecting them directly with donors through an online crowdfunding platform. After graduating magna cum laude in 2011, Moussavian joined the Obama administration, where she worked for four years.
      
From July 2012 to June 2015, she served on the National Economic Council, where much of her work entailed collaborating with business, labor and nonprofit partners to help more Americans, especially those who traditionally face barriers to acquiring a job that pays a decent wage, receive education and training.
                                                                                                                                                        In 2015 Moussavian left the White House to launch a storytelling project. With support from New America, Amtrak and the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, she traveled across the U.S. to interview people who successfully overcame significant socioeconomic challenges, thanks in part to some of the policies on which she previously worked. With a team of filmmakers and interactive designers, she turned the interviews into short documentaries demonstrating how business, labor, nonprofits and government can create new pathways for workers to advance their careers.      

More info about the Soros scholarship and other research and fellowship opportunities is available from Penn’s Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships.