Briseyda Barrientos Ariza and Vaithish Velazhahan win the prestigious Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for her work on oral histories.
Stories, and how we tell them, dictate our literary understandings, and moreover, our own conceptions of reality. It is language that constructs our experience, and alternatively, allows us to see reality differently.
Briseyda Barrientos Ariza
Two Gates Cambridge Scholars have been selected for the prestigious Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship.
Briseyda Barrientos Ariza and Vaithish Velazhahan are two of 30 exceptional immigrants and children of immigrants who were chosen from a record-breaking 2,600+ applicants across the USA. The Fellowship says: “The Fellows, who will receive up to $90,000 toward their graduate studies, represent the remarkable contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants across fields like medicine, law, engineering, the arts, public service and science.”
Briseyda [2023] did her MPhil in European, Latin American and comparative literatures and cultures. It built on previous work as an undergraduate on female Latin American folkloric figures, La Llorona and La Siguanaba, based on the oral histories she collected, translated and transcribed in three Guatemalan regions. For her master’s she broadened her focus to encompass the entire Central American region and its diaspora. She says: “Stories, and how we tell them, dictate our literary understandings, and moreover, our own conceptions of reality. It is language that constructs our experience, and alternatively, allows us to see reality differently.”
At Cambridge, Briseyda published her poetry in The Trinity Review, was part of the editorial team for The Scholar magazine, presented at the Cambridge History of Memory & Emotions Conference and was invited to attend the first Central American Futurities Conference in the Northeastern United States, hosted at Yale University.
Briseyda [pictured above] is continuing her scholarship on Central American orature and its revolutionary potential via a PhD in Spanish & Portuguese at Yale University as a Dean’s Emerging Scholar Fellow and Graduate Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM). She aims to establish Centres of Orature Studies across higher education institutions.
Vaithish [2018, pictured below right] did his PhD at Cambridge where he developed new techniques to determine the first high-resolution structures of G protein-coupled receptors [GCPRs] from fungi. GCPRs are membrane proteins that convert signals from a wide range of stimuli. They are also the targets of approximately 34% of all Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs, due to their wide-ranging important functions in human cells. The design of new, improved drugs with fewer side-effects requires a fuller understanding of their structures, but so far this has been elusive.
Vaithish’s research culminated in two first-authored manuscripts published in the journal Nature and the Max Perutz Student Prize for outstanding PhD thesis. His work was featured on the cover page of Alberts’ Molecular Biology of the Cell seventh edition textbook and Trends in Pharmacological Sciences journal of CellPress. Vaithish was also elected a Fellow at Caius College, Cambridge, to establish an independent research programme on GPCRs at the level of junior faculty, an honour bestowed on four out of over 650 applicants annually.
Vaithish is currently pursuing MD training at Stanford where he is a Knight-Hennessy Scholar and conducts independent neuro-immuno-oncology research aimed at innovative therapeutic development. Vaithish is also passionate about global health access and has worked with MEDLIFE in Peru and Ecuador and founded the non-profit We Save in India, which develops technology to connect doctors with underserved patients.
Now in its 27th year, the Fellowship is a non-partisan programme that has supported over 835 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows from 103 countries, many of whom have gone on to transform industries, advance knowledge and strengthen communities in the United States.
*The full list of 2025 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows and their biographies can be found here. Applications for the 2026 Fellowship application are now open. The deadline is October 30, 2025, at 2 PM ET. Full eligibility details are available here.
