News: Student Awards

Recommendations from UChicago award winners, including CS alum Polly Ren, SB’25, College Undergraduate Student Prize in Undergraduate Teaching winner.

In 2025, the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago continued its enduring legacy of scientific discovery, translating innovation into bold impact in service of a better world. We’re thrilled to share a few of our proudest achievements.

Sixth annual workshop celebrates and supports early-career data scientists.

Hilman Hanivan, Sophia Henn, Jonathan Liu, Raghav Mehrotra, and Yudai Tanaka were selected to the prestigious program’s Class of 2026.

UChicago alum John Paparrizos won the SIGMOD Test-of-Time Award for his k-Shape algorithm, advancing time series data analysis across fields like healthcare and finance.

Excellence in research leads chemistry major Melody Tang to the prestigious award.

The Physical Sciences Division has selected three graduate students to receive a William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowship for the 2025-2026 academic year.

This year, ten PSD instructors and students have been honored for excellence in teaching the next generation of scientists.

Congratulations to PSD graduate student, Nikki Keramati, who was awarded a 2025 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship! The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.

Zewei Liao, Michael Rosenbaum, Brennan Schaffner, Lennart Maximilian Seifert, and Shawn Shan were selected to the prestigious program’s Class of 2025.

Ava Polzin is one of 50 students selected as a 2024 Quad Fellow. Now in its second year, the Quad Fellowship supports exceptional master's and doctoral students pursuing studies in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the United States.

Sarah Willson, a chemistry graduate student, has won the 2024 Nellie Yeoh Whetten Award from the American Vacuum Society for her thesis research on superconducting materials. The award is one of the highest honors given to a female graduate student for their doctoral research.

Chemistry Graduate Student Lauren McNamara has been recognized with the 2024 Merck Research Award. McNamara, who works as part of the John Anderson Lab, will be recognized at the American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee (WCC) luncheon in the fall and will present her research at a symposium in August. 

University of Chicago rising fourth-year students Sarah Kress, Eva McCord, and Joshua Pixley have been awarded 2024 Barry Goldwater Scholarships. Kress and Pixley are chemistry majors.

This year, nine PSD instructors and students have been honored for excellence in teaching the next generation of scientists.