The third annual Samvid Scholars list was announced on December 18, which includes a student of Indian origin. Avi Gupta, of class 2026 at Yale Law School, was one among 20 students nationwide selected for the scholarship from over 1,000 applicants.
“I'm honored and excited to have been selected as a 2023 Samvid Scholar. I feel truly fortunate to have the chance to learn from such an inspiring group of young leaders from across the country,” Gupta wrote on LinkedIn.
The Samvid Scholarship program was founded in 2021 by Samvid Ventures, a philanthropic foundation dedicated to improving lives through education and entrepreneurship. The program “empowers mission-driven graduate students, with exceptional track records of impact, to lead transformative change for society through leadership development, community, and financial support.”
The cohort of scholars in 2023 includes young leaders in medicine, medical technology, disability advocacy, and economic development. Gupta and the 19 other scholars on the list will receive up to $100,000 in funding for their graduate program. Additionally, they will engage in two years of leadership development programming to “fulfil their extraordinary potential to drive change.”
In the first year, training includes reflection on the core questions of self-knowledge, and second-year programming includes the development of cross-disciplinary skills. The training is devised to help equip the scholars to drive and lead impact at scale.
Gupta is a Doctor of Law (JD) student at Yale. He received his Master of Science in Computer Science program from Stanford University in 2023. Prior to that, he studied Bachelor of Arts, Political Science at Stanford. In 2022, he was one among 58 students to receive the Truman Scholarship for his work on technology and public policy.
Gupta has been involved in public policy since high school. In 2016, he along with his classmates founded Project32, a student-run nonprofit, through which they provided dental hygiene education and access to dental products for underserved youth across the world.
In 2019, he appeared on the NBC network show Jeopardy! where he became the teen tournament national champion. He started a #InspiredBy campaign to help pancreatic cancer research and donated US $10,314 from his winnings to leverage the platform. He ended up raising US $200,000 for pancreatic cancer early detection research.
During the peak of Covid-19, Gupta joined a collective of professional engineers, physicians, and designers as a founding member of LifeMech, which sought to provide low-cost and reliable ventilator for hospitals in need. Gupta designed and developed the user interface for the ventilator, and within four months, the team had developed technology for an FDA-approved ventilator. The technology is open-source and free to use for communities globally.
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