Graduate Student Awards and Honors

Here is a selection of the internal and external research and teaching awards garnered by the graduate students in the School of Math. The PhD dissertations and advisors of these students are listed on our Dissertation Page. Their post PhD employment may be found on our Alumni Page.

 

Best PhD Thesis

  • 2006 Rafal Komendarczyk & Serguei Norine
  • 2009 Alessandro Pugliese & John Pearson
  • 2010 Alex Grigo
  • 2011 Ulfar Stefansson
  • 2012 Amit Einav
  • 2013 Luke Postle & James Scurry
  • 2014 Ke Yin
  • 2015 Chun-Hun Liu
  • 2016 Robert Krone
  • 2017 Wuchen Li
  • 2018 Yan Wang
  • 2019 Chi Ho Yuen
  • 2020 Justin Lanier
  • 2022 Timothy Duff and Shu Liu
  • 2023 Marc Harkonen and James Wenk
  • 2024 Michael Wigal

 

Bob Price Travel Award

This award has been made possible by a gift from Robert M. Price who obtained an MS degree from the School of Math in 1958.

  • 2012 Albert Bush, Yao Li, Bulent Tosun
  • ​2013 Tobias Hurth, Chun-Hung Liu
  • 2014 Yanxi Hou, Chun-Hung Liu, Robert Rahm
  • 2015 Yanxi Hou, Wuchen Li, Yan Wang, Yichen Wang
  • 2016 He Guo, Yan Wang, Chen Xu
  • 2017 He Guo, George Kerchev, Yichen Wang
  • 2018 Marc Haerkoenen, Sudipta Kolay, Sergio Mayorga, Stephen McKean, Youngho Yoo, Xiaofan Yuan

 

CTL/BP Outstanding Grad Instructor Nominee

  • 2006 Ryan Michael Haynes
  • 2008 Mitchel Keller
  • 2009 Selma Yildirim Yolcu
  • 2013 Albert Bush
  • 2014 Jamie Conway
  • 2015 Philip Benge (Won)
  • 2016 Ishwari Kunwar
  • ​2017 Dario Mena Arias
  • 2018 Alex Hoyer
  • 2019 Marcel Celaya
  • 2020 Yoan Delchev (Won)
  • 2021 Surena Hozoori
  • 2023 James Anderson
  • 2024 Kofi Amanfu

 

CTL/BP Outstanding Grad TA Nominee

  • 2007Christina Carroll
  • 2010Huy Huynh
  • 2013 Ranjini Vaidyanathan (Won)
  • 2014 Justin Boone
  • 2015 Joseph Walsh (Won)
  • 2016 Shane Scott
  • 2017 Andrew McCullough
  • 2018 Ben Ide (Won)
  • 2019 Hangfan Li
  • 2020 Cvetelina Hill (Won)
  • 2021 Hassan Attarchi; in addition, Jack Olinde (Online TA of the Year nominee) and Juntao Duan (Online Head TA of the Year nominee)
  • 2023 Santana Afton
  • 2024 Athulya Ram (Won)

 

FESTA Fellowship

Funded by a gift from John R. Festa, this award  recognizes  graduate students who exhibit superior academic and leadership skills.

  • 2006 Mitch Keller
  • 2008 Ian Palmer & Kun Zhao
  • 2009 Carl Yerger
  • 2010 Ben Webb
  • 2011 Jie Ma
  • 2013 Meredith Casey
  • 2014 Rebecca Winarski
  • 2015 Joseph Walsh
  • 2016 Justin Lanier
  • 2017 Samantha Petti
  • 2018 George Kerchev
  • 2019 Stephen McKean
  • 2020 Christina Giannitsi and Trevor Gunn
  • 2021 Sarah Collins
  • 2022 James Anderson and Roberta Shapiro
  • 2023 Biraj Dahal and Chris Dupre
  • 2024 Griffin Edwards

 

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

  • 2011 Sarah Fletcher
  • 2015 Anna Kirkpatrick & Joseph Walsh
  • 2016 Justin Lanier & Samantha Petti
  • 2018 Kevin Shu
  • 2019 Sarah Collins & Michael Wigal
  • 2022 Sam van der Poel
  • 2023 William Frendreiss
  • 2024 Adam Zaidan

 

Outstanding TA

  • 2006 Christel Hoenegger & Thorsten Inkmann
  • 2007 Suleyman Ulusoy
  • 2008 Selma Yildirim Yolcu & Stephen Young
  • 2009 Ian Palmer & Shannon Bishop
  • 2010 Nan Lu
  • 2011 Mark Sedjro
  • 2012 Ashley Bentley
  • 2013 Rebecca Winarski
  • 2014 Tobias Hurth
  • 2015 Elizabeth Bolduc
  • 2016 Hagop Tosounian
  • ​2017 John Dever & Qingqing Liu
  • 2018 Xin Wang & Yuze Zhang
  • 2019 Alex Hoyer
  • 2020 Kisun Lee and Jiaqi Yang
  • 2021 Christina Giannitsi, Marc Harkoenen, Xiao Liu, Hyunki Min, Agiva Roy, Jiaqi Yang, Weiwei Zhang
  • 2022 Trevor Gunn
  • 2023 Victor Bailey and Daniyar Omarov
  • 2024 Tong Jin, Daniel Minahan, and Yuqing Wang

 

Outstanding Head TA

  • 2023 Daniyar Omarov
  • 2024 Logan Hart

 

Sigma-Xi Best PhD Thesis Nominee

  • 2000 Demetrio Labate (Won)
  • 2004 Kasso Okoudjou (Won)
  • 2006 Paul Wollan
  • 2007 J.P. Lessard
  • 2009 Adam Marcus (Won)
  • 2010 Alex Grigo (Won)
  • 2011 Armen Vagharshakyan
  • 2012 Jie Ma
  • 2013 Luke Postle
  • 2015 Chun-Hung Liu
  • 2020 Longmei Shu
  • 2021 Josiah Park
  • 2022 Yuchen He (Won)
  • 2023 James Wenk

 

Top Graduate Student

  • 2006 Adam Marcus
  • 2007 Armen Vagharshakyan
  • 2008 Kun Zhao
  • 2009 Alex Grigo & Hwakil Kim
  • 2010 Yun Gong & Luke Postle
  • 2011 Ricardo Restrepo & Ben Webb
  • 2012 Ruoting Gong & Chun-Hung Liu
  • 2013 Farbod Shokrieh
  • 2014 Spencer Backman
  • 2015 Fabio Difonzo & Robert Krone
  • 2016 Chenchen Mou
  • 2017 Yan Wang
  • 2018 Mark Bolding
  • 2019 Marcel Celaya
  • 2020 Justin Lanier and Josiah Park
  • 2021 Timothy Duff, He Guo, Shu Liu, Hyunki Min, Jaemin Park, Jiaqi Yang, and Youngho Yoo
  • 2022 Bhanu Kumar
  • 2023 Michael Wigal and Yuqing Wang
  • 2024 Abhishek Dhawan and Kevin Shu

 

Graduate Community Award

  • 2023 Christina Giannitsi

 

College of Science UCEM (University Center of Exemplary Mentoring) Fellowship

  • 2023 Sierra Knavel

 

David L. Brown Fellowship

  • 2020 Xiaonan Liu, Daniel Minahan, Yaghoub Rahimi, Joshua Schroeder, Roberta Shapiro, and James Wenk
  • 2021 Umar Ahmed, James Anderson, Harris Cobb, Joshua Marsh, Kevin Shu
  • 2022 Katherine Booth, Biraj Dahal, Xiying Du, Manuel Fernandez, Tong Jin, and Yijie Jin
  • 2023 Griffin Edwards, Alex Eldridge, Sean Eli, Sebastian Gutierrez Hernandez, Xuanang Li, Kalen Patton, Tomohiro Sawada, Hao Wang, and Jaden Wang
  • 2024 Daniel Hwang, Aiya Kuchukova, Junzhe Mao, Tobias Wang, Yanbo Wang, Juliet Whidden, David Winters, and Jianuo Zhou

 

Larry S. O'Hara Fellowship

  • 2020 Yuchen He
  • 2022 Youngho Yoo 
  • 2024 Sierra Knavel

 

Goizueta Foundation Fellowship

  • 2022 Sierra Knavel

 

Herbert P. Haley Fellowship

  • 2021 Jacob Ian Lewis
  • 2022 Christopher DuPre and Roberta Shapiro
  • 2024 Alex Havrilla

 

Achievement Rewards for Academic Scientists (ARCS) Foundation Award

  • 2024 Zachary Mobille