Siebel Scholars Foundation Announces Class of 2026

By: Siebel Scholars Foundation via Business Wire

September 19, 2025 at 09:00 AM EDT

World’s Brightest Business, Computer Science and Bioengineering Students Join Distinguished Leaders, Growing Scholars Community to over 2,000

The Siebel Scholars Foundation today announced the recipients of the 2026 Siebel Scholars award. Now in its 25^th year, the Siebel Scholars program annually recognizes nearly 80 exceptional students from the world’s leading graduate schools of business, computer science, and bioengineering.

The 78 distinguished students of the Class of 2026 join past Siebel Scholars classes to form an unmatched professional and personal network of more than 2,000 scholars, researchers, and entrepreneurs. Through the program, this formidable group brings together diverse perspectives from business, science, and engineering to influence the technologies, policies, and economic and social decisions that shape the future.

“Every year, the Siebel Scholars continue to impress me with their commitment to academics and influencing future society. This year’s class is exceptional, and once again represents the best and brightest minds from around the globe who are advancing innovations in healthcare, artificial intelligence, financial services, and more,” said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman of the Siebel Scholars Foundation. “It is my distinct pleasure to welcome these students into this ever-growing, lifelong community, and I personally look forward to seeing their impact and contributions unfold.”

Founded in 2000 by the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation, the Siebel Scholars program awards grants to 16 universities in the United States, China, France, Italy and Japan. Following a competitive review process by the deans of their respective schools on the basis of outstanding academic achievement and demonstrated leadership, the top graduate students from 27 partner programs are selected each year as Siebel Scholars and receive a $35,000 award for their final year of studies. On average, Siebel Scholars rank in the top five percent of their class, many within the top one percent.

This year’s honorees are:

Graduate Schools of Bioengineering

Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering and School of Medicine:

Akshaya Vijaya Annapragada, André Forjaz, Jessica Lorraine Stelzel, Kexin Wang, Yining Zhu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Engineering:

Sarah Duquette, Ellen Kan, Christine Wiggins, Christine Zheng, Daniel Zhu

Stanford University, School of Engineering and School of Medicine:

Xinyi Chen, Ananya Goyal, Ariel Hannum, Anoosha Pai S, Vivian Zhong

University of California, San Diego, Institute of Engineering in Medicine and Jacobs School of Engineering:

Rayyan Mohammed Gorashi, Anthony O. Omole, Tom Park, Keivan Rahmani, Yiyan Yu

Graduate Schools of Business

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management:

Shauhin Ahmadian, Julia Alison, Aditi Ramakrishnan, Rapha Roque, Tyler Wiik

Stanford University, Graduate School of Business:

Victor Asiwe, David Zheyu Liang, Anne Rosenblatt, Maxine Vainio, Céline Lee Vendler

University of Chicago Booth School of Business:

Lelia Busch, George Kobalyan, Aditya Kothari, Isha Mehrotra, Yufei (Grace) Wang

Graduate Schools of Computer Science

Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science:

Conrad Borchers, Michelle Zhao, Thomas Zhu

Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences:

Susobhan Ghosh, Xinran (Nicole) Han, Anastasiya Kravchuk-Kirilyuk, Zachary Ratliff, Chelse Swoopes

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Engineering:

Alina Harbuzova, Kimia Hassibi, Clement Jambon, Kanishka Mitra, Xiaochen Zhu

Princeton University, School of Engineering and Applied Science:

Jane Castleman, Sayash Kapoor, Abhishek Panigrahi, Henri Schmidt, Han Jie (Austin) Wang

Stanford University, School of Engineering:

Luciano Gonzalez, Georgios Mikos, Irawadee (Ira) Thawornbut, Suzannah Wistreich, Zhenyu Zhang

Tsinghua University, Department of Computer Science and Technology:

Zhe He, Hanyu Lai, Qilong Shi, Yining Ye, Ziyu Zeng

University of California, Berkeley, College of Engineering:

Shai Julian Dickman, Leon M. Kornfeld, Kanav Mittal, Ronit Nagarapu, Alp Eren Ozdarendeli

University of Chicago, School of Computer Science:

Hilman Hanivan, Sophia Henn, Jonathan Liu, Raghav Mehrotra, Yudai Tanaka

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Engineering:

Yulie Arad, Madhav Jivrajani, Xuying Ning, Hanning Zhang, Junyu Zhang

To date, the over 2,000 Siebel Scholars have driven innovations in over a dozen industries, launched more than 1,100 products, authored more than 470 patents, published over 44 books and more than 4,868 articles or book chapters, and managed more than $2.8 trillion in assets. As leaders of some of today’s most preeminent start-ups, nonprofits and research institutions, Siebel Scholars have served on more than 348 boards, established more than 55 philanthropic initiatives, and founded more than 161 companies – of which more than 57 have successfully gone public or were sold to enterprises including Google, Intuit, Match.com and Dropbox.

For more information about the Siebel Scholars program, please visit www.SiebelScholars.com.

About Siebel Scholars

The Siebel Scholars program was founded in 2000 by the Siebel Foundation to recognize the most talented students at the world’s leading graduate schools of business, computer science, bioengineering, and energy science. These include: Carnegie Mellon University; École Polytechnique; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Northwestern University; Politecnico di Torino; Princeton University; Stanford University; Tsinghua University; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, San Diego; University of Chicago; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Pennsylvania; and University of Tokyo. Today, our active community of over 2,000 leaders serves as advisors to the Siebel Foundation and works collaboratively to find solutions to society’s most pressing problems.

About the Siebel Foundation

The Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation, a nonprofit, public benefit corporation, was established as a private foundation in 1996. Its mission is to foster programs and organizations that improve the quality of life, environment, and education of its community members. The Siebel Foundation funds projects to support education, the homeless and underprivileged, public health, research and development around the world.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250919980775/en/

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Media Contact:

Siebel Scholars Foundation

650-299-5200

ssf@siebel.org

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Siebel Scholars Foundation Announces Class of 2026

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