2024 Award Winners

The Faculty Mentoring Award recognizes senior faculty who have demonstrated an exceptional commitment to faculty mentoring through their work with tenure-track and mid-career faculty in developing their careers. Exceptional mentoring can include offering advice, feedback and guidance on research activities, coaching on work-life balance issues, providing professional opportunities for mentees, and/or assisting in development of teaching skills. The Faculty Mentoring Award honors the outstanding mentoring legacy of Columbia Business School Professor Katherine W. Phillips.

2024 Faculty Mentoring Award

Jason E. Smerdon is a Professor of Climate within the Columbia Climate School, Co-Senior Director for Education, and Co-Director of the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development. He teaches courses on climate, environmental change and sustainable development to undergraduate and graduate students. Smerdon also lectures widely in public and private settings on the subject of climate change and its social dimensions. Smerdon’s research focuses on climate variability and change during the past several millennia and how knowledge of past climates can help us understand future climate change. He publishes widely in the scientific literature on paleoclimate reconstruction techniques, the dynamics of past climate change and variability, and on assessing climate model simulations of the past and future using paleoclimatic information. In 2013, Smerdon served as a Contributing Author to Assessment Report Five (WG1) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is co-author of the textbook Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future (Columbia University Press, 2018). Smerdon received his BA in physics from Gustavus Adolphus College and his PhD in applied physics from the University of Michigan.

Nancy Baker Worman is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature in the Classics department at Barnard College and is affiliated with the program in Comparative Literature and the department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Nancy Worman's research focuses on style and the body in performance in classical Greek drama and its reception, as well as rhetoric and ancient and modern literary theory. She has published books and articles on these topics, including Landscape and the Spaces of Metaphor in Ancient Literary Theory and Criticism (Cambridge, 2015), Virginia Woolf’s Greek Tragedy (Bloomsbury, 2019), and Tragic Bodies: Edges of the Human in Greek Drama (Bloomsbury, 2021), which won the 2022 PROSE Award for Classics. Her current research is focused on embodiment in ancient and modern literary theory and feminist receptions of ancient literature. Worman joined the faculty of Barnard in 1996, having received her BA from Barnard and her PhD from Princeton.

The Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student was established in 1996 to recognize and celebrate graduate students who exemplify excellence in teaching. To receive this award is a great honor, as it demonstrates commitment to excellent and often innovative teaching as recognized by the entire Columbia community. Prospective recipients are nominated by their students and peers. From that pool, the faculty members on the Teaching Awards Committee select the final awardees.

2024 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student

Sourav Chatterjee (’20MPhil, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies) is a Graduate Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate. Originally from Kolkata, India, he earned a bachelor of arts in English Honors (First Class) at St. Xavier’s College at the University of Calcutta and both a master’s in English and a master’s of philosophy in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India. He is a scholar of South Asian visual culture, literary and cultural criticism, printed imagetext, ephemera, and colonial gender and sexuality, and his dissertation traces printed imagetexts and the politics of gender representation in colonial Bengal. As a 2023-24 GSAS Graduate Teaching Scholar, he has created and taught the course “Introduction to Twentieth-Century South Asian Literature” in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies.

Manasi Jayakumar (’22MPhil, Psychology) is a Graduate Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate. Originally from Chennai, India, she earned a bachelor’s in biotechnology engineering from Birla Institute of Technology & Science in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and a master’s of science in applied cognition and neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on how endogenous fluctuations in attention can be characterized and how these fluctuations in attention influence the temporal organization of memory. She is a member of the Aly lab. As a 2023-24 GSAS Graduate Teaching Scholar, she has created and taught the course “From Lab to Life: How Cognition Research Affects Everything You Do” in the Department of Psychology.

Daniel Santiago Sáenz (’21MPhil, Latin American and Iberian Cultures) is a Core Preceptor in Literature Humanities and PhD candidate. He is affiliated with the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Originally from Montréal, Canada, he earned both a bachelor of arts with great distinction in honors religion with a minor in art history and a master’s of arts in art history from Concordia University in Montréal. Daniel’s research focuses on three interrelated areas: the relationship between artistic theory and Iberian imperial expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the visual culture of masculinities and dissident sexualities in the early modern circum-Atlantic world; and the history, theory, and practice of Christian art. Drawing from contextual and decolonial methodologies, Daniel’s work seeks to shed light on the role of traveling artists in the construction of artistic, religious, and gender discourses at the time of Iberian imperial expansion. He has previously taught courses on Spanish language and Hispanic cultural studies, and is currently a Core Preceptor in Literature Humanities in the Columbia College Core Curriculum.

In recognition of exceptional commitment to scholarship, mentorship, service, and advocacy

The Dr. Devon T. Wade Mentorship, Service, and Advocacy Award is presented annually to a Master’s or doctoral student in any Arts and Sciences discipline who most exemplifies a commitment to community-building and mentoring as demonstrated by the late Dr. Devon T. Wade. Recipients receive a $1,500 prize in recognition of their achievements.

About Dr. Wade

The award was established in 2018 in honor of the life and work of Dr. Devon T. Wade. Wade enrolled in the PhD program in sociology at Columbia University in 2011 and came to be recognized as being among the University’s most gifted doctoral students. Wade’s dissertation research focused on stigma, trauma, and discipline in the school setting. He received multiple awards for his promising scholarship, including the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. 

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts of Sciences awarded the doctoral degree to Devon Wade posthumously, in recognition of his scholarly achievements and of the impact he made on others through his research, mentorship, service, and advocacy. Dr. Wade was passionate about teaching and creating inclusive learning environments, and advocating for those who experience marginalization in society. In his work he was particularly focused on the collateral consequences of incarceration on individuals and communities.  Dr. Wade was also deeply devoted to building networks of support and mentorship for students from groups that historically have been underrepresented in the academy. He was a founding member of the Columbia University Graduate Students of Color Alliance (SoCA). 

Garima Raheja

Garima Raheja (’22MA, Earth and Environmental Sciences) is a PhD candidate at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, studying atmospheric impacts of urban air pollution and its disproportionate impacts on public health. Raheja is concurrently working with The White House on decarbonizing the US energy supply. 

Additionally, she is leading the development of methods and best practices for community- and citizen-based science production, and creating pathways and training about environmental justice for graduate and undergraduate students in universities around the world. Having grown up between New Delhi, India, and the San Francisco Bay Area, Raheja is passionate about environmental justice through climate action in the service of those most severely impacted. She holds a BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and a BA in Data Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

The Outstanding Recent Alumni Award honors individuals who have graduated within the past fifteen years and have excelled in the early stages of their careers, exemplifying what GSAS alumni can achieve. Since 2015, this award has been presented annually to one doctoral graduate and one Master’s graduate.

2024 Outstanding Recent Alumni Award

Anuk Arudpragasam (’19PhD, Philosophy) Arudpragasam is a Sri Lankan Tamil novelist writing in English and Tamil. His debut novel The Story of a Brief Marriage (Flatiron Books, 2016) was highly acclaimed, and won the 2017 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and was shortlisted for the 2017 Dylan Thomas Prize. His second novel, A Passage North (Penguin Random House, 2021) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  

Arudpragasam moved to the United States at the age of 18 to attend Stanford University, where he earned his BA in Philosophy. After graduating from Stanford, he lived in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu for a year, then returned to the US to work on his PhD in philosophy at Columbia University.

Tetiana (Tanya) Kotelnykova (’23MA, Human Rights Studies) fled Ukraine during the 2022 Russian military invasion. She initially entered Western Europe, then came to the United States to study human rights after being awarded Columbia’s Scholarship for Displaced Students. In October 2022, she founded Brave Generation, a non-profit organization devoted to empowering young Ukrainians by providing them with the essential tools and connections they need to contribute to Ukraine's post-war reconstruction. Additionally, Kotelnykova serves as a project coordinator at the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, where her role involves enhancing democracy promotion workshops, and the Nemtsov forum as well as overseeing the management of the scholarships related to Ukrainian students. Tanya Kotelnykova is currently pursuing an MA in Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies at Yale University. Besides her MA in Human Rights from Columbia University she has a BA in Law from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

The Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement recognizes accomplished recipients for their profound impact not only on academia, but on the world at large. This award has been presented annually since 1997, and in each year since 1998, it has been presented to one doctoral graduate and one Master’s graduate.

2024 Dean's Award for Distinguished Achievement

Timothy L. Macdonald (’75PhD, Chemistry) is a professor and former Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Virginia. He is an expert and early pioneer in the creation of T-type calcium channel blockers for use in cancer treatment. He has over 250 publications and 45 pending and issued patents. Macdonald has shepherded four of his own compounds from the bench to the clinic and helped to oversee the development of another dozen drugs as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. He is the founder of four pharmaceutical companies, including Tau Therapeutics, SphynKx Therapeutics, Cavion (where he is currently an advisor), and Adenosine Therapeutics LLC, which sold to Clinical Data in 2008. He was a senior scientific advisor to Allergan Inc. and has served on several scientific advisory boards, including for Serenex Inc. Macdonald has been awarded numerous honors, including being twice recognized as the “Inventor of the Year” by the University of Virginia. He was also an NIH Fellow at Stanford University.

Melissa Garcia (she/elle/ella) (’11MA, International and World History) (Dual MA/MSc with The London School of Economics and Political Science) is an international development worker and humanitarian advocate. After earning a bachelor’s degree in History from McGill University in 2004, graduating with Great Distinction, she continued her studies at Columbia and The London School of Economics and Political Science, and earned dual master of arts and master of science degrees in International and World History in 2011. She is focused on policy change and programs and operations impact that centers the leading work by and for women, girls and marginalized people to respond to the crises that their communities and countries face. For this, she engages with local women civil society leaders, and with elected and ministerial officials and with UN stakeholders responsible for aid outcomes. Areas of work include Palestine, Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Haiti, Ukraine/regional response, Sahel, Syria; as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Cambodia, Laos, and others. Technical areas of expertise include gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)/ global health, gender-based violence. She has co-authored several publications and contributed to global normative guidance for service delivery on SRHR and family planning in humanitarian settings. She is from Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Louis Eugene Brus ('69PhD, Chemical Physics) is a distinguished alumnus of the Graduate School, and current Samuel Latham Mitchill Professor Emeritus and Special Research Scientist at Columbia. His groundbreaking work in experimental chemical physics has considerably advanced the field of chemistry and nanoscience. His discovery and development of quantum dots—tiny crystals a few dozen atomic diameters wide—has led to nanotechnology that improves the light from televisions and LED lamps, and can also guide surgeons in their hunt for tumors, among many other applications.

After earning his bachelor of science degree on a military scholarship at Rice University in 1965, Brus arrived at Columbia to continue his study of chemistry and physics. After earning the PhD in 1969, he returned to the military as a lieutenant in the Navy, serving as a scientific staff officer in the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. In 1973, Brus left the Navy to join the researchers at Bell Laboratories, where he experimented with small molecules and nanocrystals—work that led to many discoveries such as identifying the connection between the particle size of semiconductors and the wavelength of light they emit: now known as the Brus equation. 

Returning to Columbia in 1996 as a professor in the department of chemistry, Brus continued his research. He was elected a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998 and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2004, and was a co-recipient of the 2006 R.W. Wood Prize from the Optical Society of America for pioneering studies of nanocrystal quantum dots and their electronic and optical properties. Brus earned  the inaugural Kavli Prize for nanoscience in 2008 for his work in nanostructures in physics and chemistry. In 2009, he received the Willard Gibbs Award for his leading role in research that led to “a general understanding of how semiconductor nanocrystals, with increasing size, evolve electronically into bulk semi-conductors.” Brus was chosen for the 2010 NAS Award in Chemical Sciences, and in 2012, received the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science.

Just last year, Brus was awarded the highest scientific honor in the world, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, jointly with researchers Alexey Ekimov and Moungi Bawendi, “for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.”