Accolades 2023-2024

Across campus and academia, Arts & Sciences students, staff, faculty, and alumni are recognized for their scholarly pursuits, their leadership, and their contributions to their professions and communities — on campus and on the national or global level. Below are some of the accolades that our community received during the 2022-2023 academic year. If your name is missing on any of these lists, please email us.

Highlights

BU Ecologist Lucy Hutyra Wins a 2023 MacArthur “Genius Grant”

Lucy Hutyra is a professor of Earth and environment, director of the BU Biogeoscience Program, and associate director of the BU URBAN Program, which prepares PhD students to address urban environmental challenges. She focuses on understanding the impacts of urbanization on climate and ecosystems, studying how urban environments influence trees and the carbon cycle, and advancing knowledge on how to meet climate action and emission reduction goals. She is one of 20 2023 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Each fellow receives an $800,000 no-strings-attached “genius grant,” spread over five years.

CAS Names Inaugural A&S Term Distinguished Professors

CAS named the inaugural cohort of Arts & Sciences Term Distinguished Professors: Deborah Carr, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center of Innovation in Social Science, Lucy Hutyra, Professor of Earth & Environment and Director of the Biogeosciences Program, Cheryl Knott, Professor and Associate Chair of Anthropology, Andrei Ruckenstein, Professor of Physics, and Pamela Templer, Professor and Chair of Biology and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health. This distinguished professorship was created by the College of Arts & Sciences to recognize Arts & Sciences faculty members of international renown in any field, who have demonstrated a sustained record of excellence in research, teaching, and service. The title is held for duration of their time at BU.

Andrea Berlin wins Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement

Andrea Berlin, Wiseman Chair in Classical Archaeology, has been named the 2025 winner of the Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement by the Archaeological Institute of America, the largest and oldest organization in North America dedicated to archaeological research and advocacy. This is the highest honor that the AIA bestows and the premiere lifetime achievement recognition in the field of archaeology. The medal will be presented at the 2025 Annual Meetings, which will be held in January 2025 in Philadelphia.

Three BU Scholars Receive 2024 Sloan Research Fellowships

Three Boston University researchers have been named 2024 Sloan Research Fellows, a competitive award given annually to early-career researchers across a range of scientific disciplines. Astronomer Chuanfei Dong, neurobiologist Meg Younger, and biomedical engineer Hadi Nia, are among the 126 scientists from the United States and Canada who received the prize. According to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, fellowships are “a marker of the quality of an institution’s faculty and proof of an institution’s success in attracting the most promising early-career researchers to its ranks.”

Assistant Professor and Postdoc receive Pew Charitable Trusts awards

Assistant Professor of Biology Meg Younger has been named a 2024 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, and Florencia Fernandez Chiappe, a postdoctoral researcher in Younger’s lab, has been named a 2024 Pew Latin American Fellow in the Biomedical Sciences. The awards are given by The Pew Charitable Trusts, a non-profit organization that uses data to address the challenges of our changing world. The Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences program provides four years of funding to 22 early-career scientists to explore some of the most pressing questions in human health and medicine.

CAS Senior wins prestigious astronomy award

Nicolas (Nico) McMahon (CAS’24), an astronomy & physics major from Windsor, Conn., won the prestigious Chambliss Award, given to recognize exemplary research by undergraduate and graduate students who present at one of the poster sessions at the American Astronomical Society.

New Community Impact Award celebrates student advocacy

The Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program (WGS) has created a new Community Impact Award to honor students serving marginalized communities through their advocacy and research. The inaugural awardees are Bahar Aldanmaz, a doctoral candidate in sociology who researches and advocates for menstrual justice and global health and co-founder of an organization dedicated to ending “period poverty” in Turkey, and Shre Venkatesan (CAS’25), an economics and sociology major whose research focuses on estranged students’ access to healthcare, specifically in marginalized communities.

Faculty Accolades

External Awards and Honors

Director of Undergraduate Studies and Clinical Professor of American Studies Mary Battenfeld has received a Fulbright Specialist Award to work at the Institute of Advanced Communication, Education, and Research in Nepal.

The Archaeological Institute of America selected Professor of Archaeology and Religion Andrea Berlin as the 2025 recipient of the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement. This award recognizes distinguished contributions to archaeology, primarily through research and/or fieldwork and is the highest honor the Institute bestows.

David Campbell, professor of physics and director of graduate studies, has been named a co-recipient of SigmaPhi Prize in Statistical Physics in Greece, for clarifying the mechanism by which microscopically reversible, non-integrable dynamical systems either approach statistical equilibrium or remain trapped in non-equilibrium metastable states.

Charles B. Chang, associate professor of linguistics, was awarded the Anne Cutler International Visiting Fellowship by Western Sydney University, a grant for “eminent researchers” in Linguistics, Speech Science, Developmental Psychology, Experimental Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Computational Linguistics, and Speech/Communication Engineering.

Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature Yuri Corrigan and Professor of English and Director of the American and New England Studies Program Joe Rezek have been awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship awards. Rezek’s award is in support of his project, The Racialization of Print, for which he is writing a book on the history of the transmission of racial knowledge and racial ideology through reading, 1598–1840. Corrigan’s award is in support of his project, Chekhov’s Ethics: From Anesthetics to Antidotes, for which he will be researching and writing leading to a book on Russian playwright Anton.

Professor of Computer Science Mark Crovella and his team, Paul Barford and Joel Sommers, have been awarded a NSF Network Technologies and Systems Medium award in support of their research project, “Large Scale Analysis of Configurations and Management Practices in the Domain Name System.” The project seeks to contribute a deeper understanding of what is usual, and what is unusual, with respect to the contents of the internet’s domain name system (DNS). New techniques and findings from this project will lead to a more robust, manageable, and better performing DNS, which has potential to positively impact society as a whole.

Assistant Professor of Astronomy Chuanfei Dong and Assistant Professor of Biology Meg Younger have been named 2024 Sloan Research Fellows, a competitive award given annually to early-career researchers across a range of scientific disciplines.
Assistant professor of English and African American & Black Diaspora Studies Ianna Hawkins Owen’s essay “More: Cake, Feedism, and Asexuality” from Social Text has received honorable mention for the Crompton-Noll Prize for Best LGBTQ Studies Article from the American Studies Association and Gay and Lesbian/Queer Caucus of the Modern Language Association.

Professor of English Leslie Epstein‘s play King of the Jews (adapted from his 1979 novel) ran at HERE Arts Center (NYC).

Professor of Earth & Environment Sergio Fagherazzi was elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Liling Huang, senior lecturer of Chinese, received the 2023 ACTFL Global Engagement Initiative award for her experiential learning/community engagement project. She also accepted the 2023 ACTFL research priority grant award for her intercultural research study.

Jonathan Huggins, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for his project, “Scalable and Robust Uncertainty Quantification using Subsampling Markov Chain Monte Carlo Algorithms.”

The American Academy of Religion has awarded Associate Professor of Religion and Religions of China, April Hughes, as a finalist for the Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion Historical Studies.

Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth & Environment Lucy Hutyra received a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship, commonly referred to as a “Genius Grant.” An expert on urban climate, Hutyra was honored for her efforts to mitigate extreme heat and other consequences of climate change.

Kevin Lang, the Lawrence A. Bloom Professor of Economics, was named to the Massachusetts Advisory Council for the Advancement of Representation in Education. The council is a new state initiative formed in anticipation of the recent Supreme Court decision on race-conscious college admission programs.

Dan Li, associate professor of earth & environment, was awarded the prestigious American Geophysical Union Global Environmental Change Early Career Award.

Visiting Professor of English Koritha Mitchel was named an honoree for the 2023 Women’s Media Center (WMC) Women’s Media Awards and a recipient of the WMC Progressive Women’s Voices IMPACT Award.

Assistant Professor of Computer Science Sabrina Neuman was named a recipient of the Innovation Career Development Professorship.

Professor of Economics Daniele Paserman has been named President of the Society of the Economics of the Household.

Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences Steve Ramirez was named in the inaugural class of ALX100—100 Local LatinX Leaders Changing Massachusetts in 2023, by Amplify LatinX.

Associate Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences Robert Reinhart has received a 2023 International OCD Foundation Innovator Award for his project titled, “Personalized neuromodulation for a novel OCD biomarker and treatment.”

Robert Reinhart, associate professor of psychological & brain sciences, was awarded funding from the National Institutes of Health for his new project, “Personalized Synchronization of Cortical Rhythms to Improve Memory in Alzheimer’s Disease.”

Professor of Physics Lee Roberts and Professor of Biology, Bioinformatics, Biomedical Engineering, and Physics Daniel Segrè have been named American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellows.

Professor of Physics Lee Roberts and his project, Precision Muon Physics at Fermilab, and Professor of Physics Marcus Schmaltz and his project, Topics in Theoretical High Energy Physics, are among 80 projects selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to receive funding for research in high energy physics.

Professor of Physics Martin Schmaltz has been selected to receive a Humboldt Research Award. This award is conferred in recognition of the award winner’s entire academic record to date, and award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in cooperation with specialist colleagues in Germany.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Biology Chris Schmitt was awarded a Leaky Foundation Grant for his project, Fission-Fusion Dynamics in a High-Altitude Atelin Primate (Lagothrix flavicauda).

Lisa Smith, clinical professor in Psychological & Brain Sciences and founder and director of the BU Psychological Services Center, has been awarded the Association of Psychology Training Clinic’s APTC Clinic Director Mentor Award.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Minjung Son was named a recipient of the David R. Dalton Career Development Professorship.

Associate Professor of Physics Alex Sushkov received an award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support his study of dark matter.

Sassan Tabatabai, master lecturer in world languages & literatures and the core curriculum, won the 2023 Persian Translation Prize from the Lois Roth Foundation for his translation of Sadeq Hedayat’s Blind Owl.

Professors of Economics Linh Tô and Randall Ellis have been awarded a two-year grant from the Social Science Research Council to study biases in self-assessment that affect the success of women in academia.

Associate Professor of English Christopher Walsh has been selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2023-2024 for Türkiye. He will be teaching American Literature at Başkent University for the Fall 2023 semester.

Quanzhi Ye, visiting researcher at the Center for Space Physics, was awarded the 2023 Harold C. Urey Prize, which recognizes and encourages outstanding achievements in planetary science by an early-career scientist for his contribution to the understanding of small bodies in the inner solar system by exploring the boundary between active and inactive objects.

BU Awards and Honors

Alexis Courtney, lecturer of chemistry, received the 2024 Frank and Lynne Wisneski Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Lillie Webb, lecturer in French, director of BU global house, was the 2024 faculty recipient of the Susan K. Jackson Award.

Yuri Corrigan, associate professor of Russian and comparative literature, received the 2024 Metcalf Cup and Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

Alexis Peri, associate professor of history, received the 2024 Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Liz Stevens, lecturer in the writing program, received the 2024 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Part-Time Teaching.

Kimberly Arkin, associate professor of anthropology, received the 2024 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education.

Kyle Gobrogge, lecturer in the undergraduate program in neuroscience; Margarita Guillory, associate professor of religion and African American & Black diaspora studies; and Diane Mello-Goldner, senior lecturer in psychological & brain sciences received the 2024 Templeton Awards for Excellence in Student Advising.

Leah Kronenberg, associate professor of classical studies, received the 2024 Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Amanda Tarullo, associate professor of psychological & brain sciences was one of the recipients of the Boston University Initiative on Cities (IOC) tenth annual request for proposals for early-stage urban research.

Merav Shohet, associate professor of anthropology, was named a 2024 Undergraduate Academic Advising Award Winner.

Maria Datel, master lecturer in Spanish, coordinator of the Spanish language program was the 2024 faculty recipient of the CAS Inclusion Diversity, Equity, Access, Leadership Award.

Alison Carberry, master lecturer of Spanish, received the 2023 Neu Family Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Fallou Ngom, professor of anthropology, was named one of the 2024 recipients of the Provost’s Teacher-Scholar of the Year.

Salima Slimane, lecturer in Arabic, coordinator of the Arabic program, received the CAS award for Distinction in First Year Undergraduate Education.

Deborah Carr, Professor of Sociology and Director of Center for Innovation in Social Sciences;

Lucy Hutyra, Professor of Earth & Environment and Director of Biogeosciences Program;

Cheryl Knott, Professor and Associate Chair of Anthropology; Andrei Ruckenstein, Professor of Physics; and Pamela Templer, Professor and Chair of Biology and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health were named as the inaugural Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professors.

Leah Kronenberg, associate professor of Classical Studies, received the Arts & Sciences Gitner Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Arts & Sciences.

Alison Carberry, master lecturer in Spanish, received the Arts & Sciences Neu Family Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Alexis Courtney, lecturer in chemistry, received the The Frank and Lynne Wisneski Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Salima Slimane, lecturer in Arabic and coordinator of the Arabic Language program, received the College of Arts & Sciences Award for Distinction in First Year Undergraduate Education.

Kimberly Arkin, associate professor of Anthropology, received the Arts & Sciences Dean’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Education.

Liz Stevens, lecturer in the CAS Writing Program, received the Arts & Sciences Dean’s Award for Excellence in Part-time Teaching.

Kyle Gobrogge, lecturer in Neuroscience, received the CAS Templeton Award for Excellence in Student Advising

Margarita Guillory, associate professor of Religion, received the CAS Templeton Award for Excellence in Student Advising.

Diane Mello-Goldner, Senior Lecturer in Psychological and Brain Sciences, received the CAS Templeton Award for Excellence in Student Advising.

Staff Accolades

Staff Awards and Honors

Student Accolades

External Awards & Honors

Martin Aucoin, a PhD student in Anthropology, won Oxford University’s TABLE 2024 Essay Contest with his beautifully written piece, “De-Naturalizing the Poultry Plant.”

Neuroscience PhD student Patrick Bloniasz (GRS/MED ’29), Biology PhD student Ten Harder (GRS ‘30), Biology PhD student Dylan Mankel (GRS`27) Biology PhD student Elif Ozsen (GRS ’30), and Earth & Environment PhD student Xiaoran Zhu (GRS ’29) were named National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows.

Emerson Conrad-Rooney, a doctoral student in BU’s Biology Department, has been selected to receive the Ecological Society of America’s 2024 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award.

Economics major Madeline Figas (CAS ’24), PhD candidate in History of Art & Architecture Morgan Snoap (GRS ‘27), graduate student in History of Art & Architecture Graham Stopa (GRS ‘24), and Astronomy and Physics major Madison VanWyngarden (CAS ’24) received grants from the Fulbright US Student Program.

Neuroscience major Katherine Farfan (CAS ’26), political science major Jessica Lee (CAS ’26), and Chinese and Japanese & Linguistics major Samantha Makishima (CAS ’26) were named Critical Language Scholars (CLS).

Bo Feng, a PhD candidate in Political Science, won the American Political Science Association Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant for his dissertation project “Strategic Allocation of Discretionary Power in Authoritarianism: Political Control, Politicians’ Preferences, and Policy Trade-offs in China.” His dissertation will examine how Chinese political elites allocate discretionary power to subordinates.

Graduate student in International Affairs Devon Fine (GRS ’25) and PhD student in Religion Gabirel Paxton (GRS ‘26) were named Boren Fellows.

International Relations major Yemariam Gebeyehu was one of 20 students from underrepresented communities across the United States selected to participate in the inaugural Meridian-Cox Foreign Service Fellowship for Emerging Leaders in Washington, DC in summer 2024.

Anthropology PhD candidate Leyla Jafarova was the 2nd place winner of the 2024 Peter K. Student Research Award for her submission, “Ethics, Epistemologies, and Humanitarianism: Exploring Alternative Ways of Knowing about Missing Persons in Post-War Azerbaijan.” The award is presented each year by the Society for Applied Anthropology. In addition to a cash prize of $1,500, Leyla will also present her paper at a featured session during the 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology.

AMNESP PhD candidate Genna Kane has been awarded the Alice Ross Carey Fellowship from the Environmental Design Archives at the University of California Berkeley. This fellowship will support Genna’s dissertation research about the environmental history of Boston’s waterfront.

Linguistics PhD candidate Jackson Kellogg won first prize for Best Student Abstract at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting – the primary national conference for the field.

Sophie Li, a PhD student in the Economics Department, was awarded the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series Excellence in Research Award for her work on gender dynamics in the US Postal Service.

Trenton Mulick, Alice Ni, and Sebastián Sánchez Bernal were selected as a winning group in the Pale Blue Dot competition organized by NASA and UNOOSA. Their team “EE Frogs” completed the project “Solar panel suitability on the Turks and Caicos Islands.”

Anthropology and Archaeology PhD Candidate Samantha Nadel received a Dissertation Fellowship from the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry at the Science History Institute for the 2024-2025 academic year. The fellowship will have Samantha in residence in Philadelphia while she completes her dissertation on the archaeo-chemistry of cochineal production in Mexico during the Late Postclassic to Early Colonial period.

History PhD Candidate Tom Sojka received a North American Conference on British Studies-Gale Digital Scholar Lab Fellowship. This award is designed to support research and projects that utilize Gale Primary Sources, such as Gale’s British Library Newspaper series.

AMNESP PhD candidate Meghan Townes has accepted a 2024 Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowship from the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. The award will fund a week’s visit to their E. Claiborne Robins, Jr. Research Library. Meghan will also present her research findings at one of their weekly, informal colloquia.

Biology major Sofia Weaver (CAS ’25) and Neuroscience major Clara Chung (CAS ‘25) were named Goldwater Scholars.

Economics PhD student Hannah Zhang won the Best Student Paper Award at the recent International Association for Applied Econometrics (IAAE) annual conference in Xiamen, China. Her paper “Price Discrimination and Adverse Selection in the U.S. Mortgage Market” studies explanations for price heterogeneity in US markets.

Campus Awards & Honors

The College Prize

Anthropology — Julianna Dick
Archaeology — Ranran Zhang
Astronomy — Nicole M. Flors
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology — Iana Nikorich
Biology — Juneau Wang
Chemistry — Alice C. Fan
Cinema & Media Studies Program — Danielle Imade Momoh
Classical Studies — Kit Houng Li
Computer Science — Anming Gu
Earth & Environment — Alice L. Ni
Economics — Hanna Josephine Dworkin
English —Max Alexander Bearinger
History — Eitan B. Marshall-Pinko
History of Art & Architecture — Romy Binstein
Linguistics — Samantha Mae Rigor
Marine Program — Abigail Sloot
Mathematics & Statistics — Kyle James Mickelson
Medical Science — Rishi Shah
Neuroscience— Tori Keefauver
Philosophy — Kimberly N. Schneider
Physics — Samuel Fulton
Political Science — Kristen Nicole Bangma
Psychological & Brain Sciences — Dinah Rose Sher Gongora
Religion — Jessica Lynn Fatzinger
Romance Studies — Isabelle Corbett Hanna
Sociology — Sofía Marín
World Languages and Literatures — Emily Marie Yoder

Hafsa Arain, a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology, received the graduate CAS Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access, Leadership award.

Hanna Dworkin, an undergraduate studying Economics and Political Science & Philosophy, received the undergraduate CAS Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access, Leadership award.

Camryn Jewel Millett received the Gregory Hudson Award for Writing Excellence in the Humanities.

Hafsa Arain, PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology was the graduate student recipient of the CAS I.D.E.A.L. Award.

Elizabeth Kostina received the Michael A. Sassano III and Christopher M. Sassano Award for Writing Excellence in the Social Sciences.

Shelby R. Vaughn received the Francis Bacon Award for Writing Excellence in the Natural Sciences.

Seynedhee Avenie, international relations, was the undergraduate student recipient of the Susan K. Jackson Award.

Bryanne McDonough, astronomy department, was the graduate student recipient of the Susan K. Jackson Award.

Vanessa Anne Hanger received the Award for Writing Excellence in the Humanities in Honor of Robert E. Charm.