MIT alumnus Steven Troung ’20 has been awarded a 2025 Knight-Hennessy Scholarship and will join the eighth cohort of the prestigious fellowship. Knight-Hennessy Scholars receive up to three years of financial support for graduate studies at Stanford University.
Knight-Hennessy Scholars are selected for their independence of thought, purposeful leadership, and civic mindset. Troung is dedicated to making scientific advances in metabolic disorders, specifically diabetes, a condition that has affected many of his family members.
Truong, the son of Vietnamese refugees, originally hails from Minneapolis and graduated from MIT in 2020 with bachelor’s degrees in biological engineering and creative writing. During his time at MIT, Truong conducted research on novel diabetes therapies with professors Daniel Anderson and Robert Langer at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and with Professor Douglas Lauffenburger in the Department of Biological Engineering.
Troung also founded a diabetes research project in Vietnam and co-led Vietnam’s largest genome-wide association study with physicians at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City, where the team investigated the genetic determinants of Type 2 diabetes.
In his senior year at MIT, Truong won a Marshall Scholarship for post-graduate studies in the U.K. As a Marshall Scholar, he completed an MPhil in computational biology at Cambridge University and an MA in creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Troung is currently pursuing an MD and a PhD in biophysics at the Stanford School of Medicine.
In addition to winning a Knight-Hennessy Scholarship and the Marshall Scholarship, Truong was the recipient of a 2019-20 Goldwater Scholarship and a 2023 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
Students interested in applying to the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program can contact Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships in Career Advising and Professional Development.
