NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Derek Soled '16, the captain of the 2015-16 men's fencing team, has been selected by the NCAA as one of two recipients of a Walter Byers Postgraduate Scholarship. He is the first Yale student-athlete to earn the distinguished honor.
Established in 1988, the Walter Byers Postgraduate Scholarship program each year awards $24,000 grants to one male and one female recipient. The grants can be renewed for a second year. Recipients chosen by the NCAA Walter Byers Scholarship Committee are recognized as combining the best elements of mind and body to achieve national distinction for their achievements and to be future leaders in their chosen field of career service.
"It is an honor to be Yale's first recipient of the Walter Byers Scholarship," said Soled.
"I am incredibly humbled and grateful to Yale Athletics and Coach [Henry] Harutunian who were willing to take a risk by letting me join the fencing team as a walk-on my first year.
"This award is for my family and sisters, my team, my professors and coaches, my friends, and everyone else who believed in me and helped me every step along the way."
George Levesque, Dean of Academic Programs in Yale College and Yale's Faculty Athletic Representative, nominated Soled for the scholarship.
"Derek represents the highest ideals of Yale Athletics and the very best of Yale's student-athletes," Levesque said. "He was a fierce competitor on the strip, as well as an outstanding student in the classroom. We are thrilled for him and proud to claim him as an alumnus."
Soled is a second-year MD/MBA candidate at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School. In 2016, Derek graduated summa cum laude from Yale and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He double majored in molecular biology and sociology and graduated with distinction in both. At graduation, Derek won the William Belknap Prize and Adam Rose Research Award for best thesis in both biology and sociology. He also won the Clarence W. Mendell Prize for highest intellectual leadership and character at the university.
In his first year at Yale, Soled joined the fencing team as a walk-on. He finished his senior year as the captain, earning the "Pop" Grasson Cup for the athlete who displays exceptional leadership, character, integrity, and commitment. He also was awarded the Everett Wetchler Award for the fencer who contributed most to the varsity team, and he was a Kiphuth Veteran Leader. He continues to fence on the national and international circuit.
Outside of the classroom and fencing strip, Derek served as the Publisher and Chairman of The Politic, Yale's political journal, and the Vice President of the Yale Political Union. He was a research assistant in Professor Patrick Loria's biophysics laboratory and a clinical research associate at the Cohen Children's Medical Center. He was also the president of Yale Athletics Community Outreach Program and Yale College Council for CARE, as well as volunteered for Students for a Better Health Care System. He was a Branford College Big Sibling and a Yale Admissions Tour Guide too.
After Yale, Derek pursued a Master of Science in medical anthropology from the University of Oxford as a NCAA Postgraduate Scholar. At Oxford, Derek was on the varsity track team and set the all-time Oxford and Cambridge record in the pole vault relay. He was also the Chairman of Oxford's Human Welfare Conference on "Reinventing Empowerment in the 21st Century." For his contributions to the college and university, he was awarded the Nautilus Prize for academic, athletic, and college leadership.
Derek's academic interests focus on the intersection between biological and social forces in shaping disease and medical treatment. He has worked on health policy for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, as well as led public health interventions in China, Haiti, and Uganda.
Soled is passionate about improving healthcare delivery and using the social sciences to better tailor public health interventions to populations most at risk. His paper on the bioethics of nudge theory in health care delivery won Harvard Medical School's 20th Annual Henry K. Beecher Prize in Medical Ethics and was runner-up in Harvard's Social Innovation Case Competition.
Outside of his studies, Soled is one of the founders and presidents of "Medicine in Motion," a national organization dedicated to fitness and philanthropy in the medical profession. He just received the Dean's Community Service Award at Harvard for his efforts in the organization and through his teaching of sexual education at local Boston middle schools. The author of over a dozen peer-reviewed journal articles and abstracts, Derek is also a committee member for the Massachusetts Medical Society. He also serves as the President of the Harvard Medical School / Harvard School of Dental Medicine Student Council and conducts research on public health quality and delivery at the Center for Global Health at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
The female scholarship was awarded to Rachael Acker, a former swimmer at California who earned her undergraduate degree in French and is now a medical student at Harvard.
