Undocumented Student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Receives 2016 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans
Denisse Rojas Marquez, a Mexican immigrant and first-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), was awarded a 2016 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, the premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants in the United States.
Ms. Marquez became one of the first two undocumented students at ISMMS in 2015. This fellowship will support her continued work toward earning her medical degree, and becoming a doctor in underserved immigrant communities and a leader in shaping health care policies.
Ms. Marquez is among the 30 recipients, called “fellows,” who were selected from a pool of more than 1,440 applicants. With a two percent acceptance rate, this was the most competitive year in the Fellowship's history. The fellows will receive tuition and stipend assistance of up to $90,000 in support of graduate education — in any field and in any advanced degree-granting program — in the United States.
Ms. Marquez was 10 months old when she and her family left Mexico for the United States. In their new home of Fremont, California, her family found new opportunities that enabled her and her two siblings to attend college. Due to her status, however, Ms. Marquez was ineligible for financial aid and often felt discouraged that no career counselor could offer her guidance on her goals.
Remaining steadfast in her aspirations, Ms. Marquez co-founded a national organization called Pre-Health Dreamers (PHD) to provide advising, resources and advocacy for other undocumented students. In just a few years, PHD has reached 652 members in 41 states. Through Ms. Marquez’s leadership, the organization co-sponsored legislation to allow California licensing boards to award professional licenses to undocumented professionals and engaged in institutional advocacy with other academic groups. As a result, more than 50 medical schools will now consider undocumented students for admission.
Paul and Daisy Soros, Hungarian immigrants and American philanthropists, established the fellowship program in 1997 to support the graduate educations of students who were born abroad but have become permanent residents or naturalized citizens of the United States. The 2016 Fellows come from a range of socio-economic backgrounds, and are all naturalized citizens, green card holders, DACA recipients, or the children of immigrants. The fellows are selected on the basis of merit. The specific criteria emphasize creativity, originality, initiative and sustained accomplishments. In addition, they must demonstrate a commitment to the values expressed in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The 2016 Fellows join the prestigious community of recipients from past years, who include U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, leading Ebola researcher Pardis Sabeti, Aspiration founder Andrei Cherny, Oscar health insurance co-founder Kevin Nazemi and more than 500 other New American leaders.
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the nation’s leading integrated academic health systems and one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Its comprehensive system includes seven hospitals, more than 400 outpatient practices, over 600 research and clinical laboratories, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Mount Sinai Phillips School of Nursing. Together, the Health System comprises approximately 48,000 employees, more than 9,000 physicians, and 8,600 nurses.
As a leading learning health system, Mount Sinai combines clinical expertise with scientific discovery to improve patient care while training the next generation of health care and biomedical leaders. The Health System provides care across every stage of life, from prenatal care through geriatrics, while advancing personalized medicine through artificial intelligence, data science, and biomedical research.
Mount Sinai is consistently recognized among the nation’s leading academic health systems for patient care, research, and education. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 1 in New York by Newsweek and No. 5 on the magazine’s World’s Best Hospitals list. The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ranks No. 11 among U.S. medical schools and No. 1 among freestanding medical schools for National Institutes of Health funding, reflecting the strength of its scientific enterprise and leadership in biomedical research.
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