Congratulations to the 2016 Truman Scholarship Finalists! The Foundation reviewed 775 files from 305 institutions. Students were selected based on their records of leadership, public service and academic achievement. Our Finalist Selection Committee selected the following 197 students from 130 institutions. These students will be interviewed by the Foundation's Regional Review Panels between March 4th and April 8th. The 2016 Class of Truman Scholars will be announced by 9:00 pm EST on April 22.

Best of luck and congratulations to all who submitted nominations.

Two Indian Americans and one South Asian out of a total of 197 students from 130 institutions have been named finalists for the 2016 Truman Scholarship by the Finalist Selection Committee of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.
 
The students were selected based on their records of leadership, public service and academic achievement.
 
The Indian American finalists are Vaishnavi Rao of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Anjali Bhatla of Rice University in Texas, while the South Asian student is Nasrin Chaudhry of the University of Montana.

Last year, the inaugural MIT INSPIRE event, a national high-school age competition for research projects in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, was launched by Rao, a brain and cognitive sciences major.

The mission of the program, according to an MIT press release, was the first of its kind in the country and encourages young people to seek innovative solutions to global problems through rigorous inquiry in the humanities, arts, and social science fields.

Chaudhry was recently elected to the Academic Senate of her university, following which she told the university newspaper she was most excited about coordinating with the ASUM’s committee for Planned Parenthood. “I will do everything in my power to make sure they get the resources they need,” she said.

Bhatla last year was honored as “Student of the Month” by END7, a campaign led by the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, to see the end of 7 neglected tropical diseases by 2020.

Bhatla told END7, she first became interested in NTDs through working at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. While conducting policy research on NTDs in Latin America and India, the undergraduate realized the global importance of the movement to decrease the burden of NTDs and founded an END7 chapter at Rice University.

The finalists will be interviewed by the Foundation's Regional Review Panels between March 4 and April 8.