Louisian-born Child of Immigrants Wins Soros Award

Philanthropists and immigrants, Paul and Daisy Soros, offer scholarships from a chartiable trust they created known as the Soros Fellowship Program. "Our selection criteria," Paul Soros says, "are designed to identify people who will make a success of their lives and who will contribute something to this country, in whatever area of endeavor they choose." Brian Goh is one of the program's recipeients and is a second-year student in the MD/PhD program at the prestigious Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Goh was born in Baton Rouge, Louisian and his parents are Chinese and moved to the United States from Malaysia. According to an article in the Johns Hopkins Gazette, "his father, one of 16 children, had been a manual laborer on a rubber plantation." Goh has an impressive background including biomedical research and co-authoring 11 publications in important journals as well as committing himself to community service. The article also mentions his research that focuses on "manipulating adult stems cells for cardiac and bone tissue regenration." In accounting their choices for the 2011 fellowship recipients, the foundation board noted that the awards, "highlight the extradordinary promise, diversity, drive and determination of recent immigrants - and the children of immigrants - to this country."