Penn Medicine student awarded a 2026 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans | Penn Today
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University of Pennsylvania
medical student
Bayan Galal
has received a
Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans
, a merit-based program that provides graduate school funding for immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States.
Galal is a second-year student pursuing an M.D. at the
Perelman School of Medicine
. She is among the 30 finalists chosen as 2026 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows from more than 3,000 applicants. Each Fellow receives up to $90,000 for graduate studies.
Born in Prospect, Connecticut, Galal is one of five children of Egyptian immigrants. Growing up between the U. S. and Egypt, she saw how structural gaps in health systems followed families across different contexts. In Egypt, she witnessed relatives navigate chronic illness in fragmented settings with limited resources. In high school, she served as an emergency medical technician, caring for patients whose vulnerabilities mirrored those she had seen abroad. Those experiences inspired her commitment to strengthening health systems for underserved populations, both domestically and internationally.
At Penn, Galal has led the United Community Clinic, served as a
Perry World House
graduate associate, and founded Providing Access to Health, a health navigation program supported by the University’s
Projects for Progress initiative
. Her research focuses on global health, including as a research fellow with the Harvard Health Systems Innovation Lab. She is national chair-elect of the student branch of the
American Association of Medical Colleges
, representing nearly 100,000 medical students nationwide, and is co-author of a chapter in a forthcoming textbook on leadership in academic medicine.
She earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale, studying molecular biology and global affairs, and her master’s degree in population health sciences from the University of Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar.
Galal is Penn’s 26th Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow since the program was founded in 1998, according to the
Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships
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