Daniel Kim ‘09 has been awarded a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans up to $90,000 towards study in medicine at Yale. He is one of 30 winners in a national competition that attracted more than 1,200 applicants.

These awards are of special note because they honor and support young New Americans: immigrants and children of immigrants.

Each year the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship Program recognizes, honors and supports 30 New Americans who seem best positioned to use their graduate training in this country to prepare them to make distinctive contributions to American life.

The son of Korean immigrants, Kim moved to California with his parents when he was 7. His grandfather was a farmer, and his father was the first in his family to get a college education. Growing up in Silicon Valley, Kim admired his father’s meticulous approach to his work as a semiconductor engineer.

Kim entered his undergraduate career at Harvard determined to make a difference in health care. He served as co-president of both Harvard College Red Cross and Team HBV, a group that educates the Asian and Pacific Islander community in Boston about the hepatitis B virus.

As his passion was taking shape, though, Kim took a leave of absence from school to take care of his father who was battling cancer.

Realizing that research was a crucial tool in improving patients’ lives, Kim met his father’s doctor and arranged to work in her laboratory. Though he hadn’t previously done biomedical research, he was soon overseeing a study repurposing the antifungal agent itraconazole as a targeted therapy for skin cancer.

After his father’s health returned, Kim went back to Harvard with renewed ambition. Kim is applying to joint M.D./Ph.D. programs and looking forward to a career as a physician-scientist involved in the fight against cancer. Heartiest congratulations on the award!