Four Indian-American researchers named 2026 Sloan Fellows
The Indian-American presence in American science was underscored again as four researchers of Indian origin made the 2026 class of Sloan Research Fellows — one of the most coveted early-career honours in the field.
Four Indian-American researchers are among the 126 recipients of the 2026 Sloan Research Fellowships, one of the most prestigious early-career awards in North American science. They are Aayush Jain, Arun Kumar Kuchibhotla and Aditi Raghunathan of Carnegie Mellon University, and Anand Natarajan of MIT — working across computer science, statistics and quantum computing.
Awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to outstanding researchers in the first years of their careers, the fellowships are widely read as a marker of future scientific leadership, and carry a research grant. The strong Indian-origin presence in the class fits a now-familiar pattern across American academia.
It was not the year's only recognition: the bioengineer Tejal Desai was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a lifetime distinction. Together the honours are another data point in the outsized role the Indian diaspora plays in the laboratories and lecture halls of the United States.
Sources: American Bazaar — Sloan Fellows · American Bazaar — Tejal Desai, AAAS.
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