Thirty American Fellows were announced for the Spring 2000 by The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. Five were Chinese Americans. Their names and biographical sketches are as follows:
Ronald Chen, 28, grew up in Hastings, Nebraska. He graduated summa cum laude in economics from Harvard, and was awarded the John Williams Prize as the top graduate in economics. A recipient of a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford, he completed his MBA and his MSc in history there and has served as a lecturer in economics at Oxford, a consultant with McKinsey & Company and as a staff economist on the Council of Economic Advisers in the White House. He has also been an exploratory candidate for a U.S. congressional seat, choosing not to run when a statewide athletic hero declared his candidacy. He is in his second year at Harvard Law School.
Bert I-in Huang, 27, is pursuing a combined J.D. at Harvard Law School and Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University. He grew up in Houston, Texas and attended Harvard College, where he was elected student chairman of Harvard's Institute of Politics and received his A.B. summa cum laude. As a Marshall Scholar, he attended Oxford University and later served as a staff economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers in the White House. He also worked for the head of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, during the Microsoft case. In February, he was elected President of the Harvard Law Review.
Sophia Jan, 23, was born in Brooklyn to parents who emigrated from Taiwan. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa and commencement speaker, she majored in Spanish at Brooklyn College. From her responsibilities as care giver for a severely disabled brother and her volunteer work in Mexico working with artisans serving disabled populations, she has been an advocate for people with special needs. In Mexico, she set-up a reading and art program for village children. She has also interned in the New York City Health Department where she was involved in public health research on the West Nile virus. Now in her second year at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, she is treasurer of Downstate's Medical Student Council and president of the American Medical Student Association, which runs community service programs for inner-city children and actively lobbies for universal health care coverage and minority health programs.
Lei Liang, 29, is in his first year of study for a PhD in music composition at Harvard University. Coming to the US as a teenager from Beijing in the wake of Tiananmen Square tragedy, he has supported himself throughout his education, first at high school in Austin, Texas and later at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he completed his bachelor's and master's degrees and received the Chadwich Medal. He has enjoyed many commissions for his musical compositions and has been identified as the "cutting edge of Twenty First Century music." He spent three years as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
Eric Sheu, 24, was born in the United States to parents who emigrated from Taiwan. He grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. Graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, where he majored in biochemistry and did research in cellular immunology, he received a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford University and completed his doctorate in immunology there. Involved in peer counseling at Harvard and offering piano lessons to local inner city high school students who could not otherwise afford instruction, he recently engaged in field research on malaria in Kenya. He is studying for his MD degree at Harvard Medical School in the Harvard/MIT Health Science and Technology program.
The purpose of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans 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.