best phd dissertation award

Outstanding Dissertation Award

The Outstanding Dissertation Award was established in 1979 by the Graduate School to recognize exceptional work by doctoral students and to encourage the highest levels of scholarship, research, and writing.

The Michael H. Granof Award will be given in 2024 to recognize the University’s top dissertation. The recipient of this year’s award will be selected from one of the three dissertation winners. The Granof Award is considered the top graduate student award. All prizes will be announced in spring of 2024.

Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) chairpersons nominate one doctoral student from their programs for the award. Winners are selected in three categories:

• Area A — Humanities and Fine Arts
• Area B — Social Sciences, Business and Education
• Area C — Mathematics, Engineering, Physical Sciences, and Biological and Life Sciences

A dissertation may be considered in only one competition category. Select the category most appropriate to the topic and methodology of the nominated dissertation.

Professional & Student Awards

Awards Open: November 1, 2023 Awards Close: February 16, 2024 Deadline extended!

If you have questions, email  Brianna Smallman .

Eligibility

To be eligible for the 2024 award, the dissertation must meet one of the following criteria:

• It will be submitted in final form to the Graduate School by April 26, 2024 for a degree to be awarded in May 2024.
• It was submitted for a degree awarded in August 2023 or December 2023.
• It was submitted after April 1, 2023, for a degree awarded in May 2023.

Nominations

The graduate school's online awards system.

Nominees for the award must be submitted through the Graduate School's dedicated online awards system. The application process entails the nominator filling out the application with the necessary details about the nominee.

To successfully complete the online application, please gather the following documents:

• Nomination Letter : A letter from the chairperson of the Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) that succinctly outlines the reasons for selecting the dissertation as the program's nominee.
• The dissertation supervisor
• The graduate adviser
• The department chair
• A committee member
• Dissertation Copy : Include one copy of the complete dissertation, along with the abstract.

Ensure all components are compiled and submitted through the Graduate School's online awards system to facilitate a thorough and efficient nomination process.

The faculty review committees will consider both the methodological and substantive aspects of the dissertations, including the:

• Importance/impact of the subject;
• Originality/creativity of the work;
• Quality of the scholarship;
• Potential for publishing;
• Organization of the dissertation;
• Quality of the writing; and
• Other appropriate factors that denote excellence.

Individuals writing letters of support should be encouraged to keep these criteria in mind as they comment on the significance/major contribution of the dissertation and the particular aspects of the dissertation that distinguish it.

2023 Award Recipients

Will Burg, Ph.D.

Michael H. Granof Award winner

Program: Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dissertation Title: Collective Quantum States in Twist Controlled Graphene Heterostructures

Alex Diamond

Program: Sociology

Dissertation Title: An Uncomfortable Peace: Everyday State Formation in Colombia’s Peace Laboratory Sociology

Augusta Lynn Dell'Omo, Ph.D.

Program: History

Dissertation Title: Saving Apartheid: Transatlantic Whiteness in the U.S.-South African Relationship, 1980-1994

New Technologies with a Twist: Engineering Alumnus Wins Top Dissertation Prize

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Prize-Winning Thesis and Dissertation Examples

Published on September 9, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on July 18, 2023.

It can be difficult to know where to start when writing your thesis or dissertation . One way to come up with some ideas or maybe even combat writer’s block is to check out previous work done by other students on a similar thesis or dissertation topic to yours.

This article collects a list of undergraduate, master’s, and PhD theses and dissertations that have won prizes for their high-quality research.

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Table of contents

Award-winning undergraduate theses, award-winning master’s theses, award-winning ph.d. dissertations, other interesting articles.

University : University of Pennsylvania Faculty : History Author : Suchait Kahlon Award : 2021 Hilary Conroy Prize for Best Honors Thesis in World History Title : “Abolition, Africans, and Abstraction: the Influence of the “Noble Savage” on British and French Antislavery Thought, 1787-1807”

University : Columbia University Faculty : History Author : Julien Saint Reiman Award : 2018 Charles A. Beard Senior Thesis Prize Title : “A Starving Man Helping Another Starving Man”: UNRRA, India, and the Genesis of Global Relief, 1943-1947

University: University College London Faculty: Geography Author: Anna Knowles-Smith Award:  2017 Royal Geographical Society Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Title:  Refugees and theatre: an exploration of the basis of self-representation

University: University of Washington Faculty:  Computer Science & Engineering Author: Nick J. Martindell Award: 2014 Best Senior Thesis Award Title:  DCDN: Distributed content delivery for the modern web

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University:  University of Edinburgh Faculty:  Informatics Author:  Christopher Sipola Award:  2018 Social Responsibility & Sustainability Dissertation Prize Title:  Summarizing electricity usage with a neural network

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty:  Education Author:  Matthew Brillinger Award:  2017 Commission on Graduate Studies in the Humanities Prize Title:  Educational Park Planning in Berkeley, California, 1965-1968

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty: Social Sciences Author:  Heather Martin Award:  2015 Joseph De Koninck Prize Title:  An Analysis of Sexual Assault Support Services for Women who have a Developmental Disability

University : University of Ottawa Faculty : Physics Author : Guillaume Thekkadath Award : 2017 Commission on Graduate Studies in the Sciences Prize Title : Joint measurements of complementary properties of quantum systems

University:  London School of Economics Faculty: International Development Author: Lajos Kossuth Award:  2016 Winner of the Prize for Best Overall Performance Title:  Shiny Happy People: A study of the effects income relative to a reference group exerts on life satisfaction

University : Stanford University Faculty : English Author : Nathan Wainstein Award : 2021 Alden Prize Title : “Unformed Art: Bad Writing in the Modernist Novel”

University : University of Massachusetts at Amherst Faculty : Molecular and Cellular Biology Author : Nils Pilotte Award : 2021 Byron Prize for Best Ph.D. Dissertation Title : “Improved Molecular Diagnostics for Soil-Transmitted Molecular Diagnostics for Soil-Transmitted Helminths”

University:  Utrecht University Faculty:  Linguistics Author:  Hans Rutger Bosker Award: 2014 AVT/Anéla Dissertation Prize Title:  The processing and evaluation of fluency in native and non-native speech

University: California Institute of Technology Faculty: Physics Author: Michael P. Mendenhall Award: 2015 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics Title: Measurement of the neutron beta decay asymmetry using ultracold neutrons

University:  Stanford University Faculty: Management Science and Engineering Author:  Shayan O. Gharan Award:  Doctoral Dissertation Award 2013 Title:   New Rounding Techniques for the Design and Analysis of Approximation Algorithms

University: University of Minnesota Faculty: Chemical Engineering Author: Eric A. Vandre Award:  2014 Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid Dynamics Title: Onset of Dynamics Wetting Failure: The Mechanics of High-speed Fluid Displacement

University: Erasmus University Rotterdam Faculty: Marketing Author: Ezgi Akpinar Award: McKinsey Marketing Dissertation Award 2014 Title: Consumer Information Sharing: Understanding Psychological Drivers of Social Transmission

University: University of Washington Faculty: Computer Science & Engineering Author: Keith N. Snavely Award:  2009 Doctoral Dissertation Award Title: Scene Reconstruction and Visualization from Internet Photo Collections

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty:  Social Work Author:  Susannah Taylor Award: 2018 Joseph De Koninck Prize Title:  Effacing and Obscuring Autonomy: the Effects of Structural Violence on the Transition to Adulthood of Street Involved Youth

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Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award

Launched in 2016, the Doctoral Dissertation Award is awarded annually to recognize a recent doctoral candidate who has successfully defended and completed his or her Ph.D. dissertation in computer graphics and interactive techniques. Recognizing young researchers who have already made a notable contribution very early during their doctoral study, the award is presented each year at the SIGGRAPH Conference and is accompanied by a plaque, complimentary full conference registration and travel to the award ceremony. Honorable Mentions may also be awarded.

Current Recipient

Cheng zhang.

F or a dissertation presenting significant advances in physics-based rendering and providing both practical tools and theoretical foundations for future differentiable rendering algorithms.

ACM SIGGRAPH is pleased to announce Cheng Zhang as the 2023 recipient of the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award . In his dissertation, Zhang presents significant advances in physics-based rendering that provide both practical tools and solid theoretical foundations for the development of future differentiable rendering algorithms. 

Differentiable rendering addresses the problem of differentiating complex light-transport effects (including soft shadows, interreflection, or subsurface scattering) of a computer-generated image with respect to all the parameters describing the scene being rendered – such as the shape of an object, the color of a surface, or the optical density of the surrounding medium. A core issue in differentiable rendering is the handling of discontinuities due to object boundaries and occlusion: the differentiation of these discontinuities leads to Dirac delta distributions inside the rendering equation integral, whose integration via Monte Carlo sampling is notoriously difficult and computationally expensive. 

Zhang proposes an ingenious approach to significantly improve the efficiency of discontinuity handling.  Starting from the path space formulation of rendering (rather than the one based on integration over solid angle), Zhang’s observation that the typical integrand required to evaluate light transport contains moving discontinuities and that its domain of integration in this formulation is parameter dependent. By importing the Reynolds transport theorem (a staple of continuum mechanics) to rendering, he is able to introduce a change of variables from the parameter-dependent path space to a parameter-independent material space, as well as an integration over discontinuity surfaces in their material path space to account for parameter-dependent discontinuities. This rigorous formulation of differential light transport in path space leads quite elegantly to Monte Carlo methods that estimate the resulting boundary and interior integrals for global illumination. 

In addition to his accomplishments in devising the theoretically important differential radiative transfer and path integral formulations, he also makes other significant practical contributions in his dissertation. For instance, Zhang noticed that derivatives in differentiable rendering are often odd functions. He exploits this property to produce negative correlation between samples for variance reduction, which greatly improves the efficiency of Monte-Carlo-based differentiable rendering. 

Zhang’s dissertation establishes both sound mathematical foundations and practical algorithms that significantly improve the efficiency of Monte-Carlo-based differentiable rendering. Both for the high quality of his contributions to the field and the exciting developments they are bound to generate in future years, the SIGGRAPH community recognizes Cheng Zhang with the 2023 ACM SIGGRAPH Doctoral Dissertation Award . 

The committee also decided to award an honorable mention to Dr. Georg Sperl for his outstanding work on the numerical homogenization and simulation of yarn-level cloth.

Previous Recipients

• 2022 Xue Bin Peng
• 2021 Minchen Li
• 2020 Tzu-Mao Li
• 2019 Lingqi Yan
• 2018 Jun-Yan Zhu
• 2017 Felix Heide
• 2016 Eduardo Simões Lopes Gastal

Honorable Mentions

• 2023 Georg Sperl
• 2022 Yuanming Hu, MIT
• 2021 David B. Lindell
• 2020 Yun Raymond Fei
• 2020 Mina Konakovic Lukovic
• 2019 Angela Dai
• 2019 Hao Su
• 2019 Adriana Schulz
• 2017 Myers Abraham (Abe) Davis
• 2017 Matthew O’Toole
• 2016 Sofien Bouaziz

Nomination Procedure

All doctoral dissertations successfully defended (or thesis accepted) during the calendar year prior to the nomination deadline are eligible for consideration. There is no limit on the number of nominations that can be made from any single institution or advisor. The key criteria used to evaluate the nominations include technical depth, significance of the research contribution, potential impact on theory and practice, and quality of presentation.

The submitted dissertation should be a finalized version. Nominations are welcomed from any country, but only English language versions will be accepted. Nominations are evaluated by the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award Committee . Nominations, including all supporting materials and endorsement letters, are due by January 31 of each year. Click the button below to submit a nomination.

Requirements

• Name, address, phone number, and email address of the nominator
• Name, address, and email address of the candidate
• Suggested citation (maximum of 25 words)
• Nomination statement (maximum of 500 words in length) addressing why the candidate should receive this award
• Copy of the dissertation in pdf format
• The nominee’s vitae
• Endorsement letters: at most three supporting letters could be included from experts in the field

PhD Dissertation Award

About the award for best dissertation in public policy and management.

The Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) seeks to recognize emergent scholars in the field by presenting an award for the best PhD dissertation in public policy and management. 

For the 2024 nominations, any dissertation that has been completed in the academic years 2022 - 2023 or 2023 - 2024, and granted a degree in that period, is eligible for consideration. No dissertation that has been completed prior to May 1, 2022 will be accepted and previously submitted dissertations will not be considered. Dissertations from any discipline are acceptable as long as they deal substantively with public policy issues and are nominated by a faculty member from an APPAM institutional member university. The faculty member does not need to be the major adviser or supervisor of the student’s dissertation, but can nominate the dissertation based on the belief that it makes a strong contribution to policy analysis.  

Nominations will open in spring 2024.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Congratulations to the 2023 Recipient!

Neil Cholli University of Chicago The 2023 PhD Dissertation Award for Best Dissertation in Public Policy and Management will be presented to  Neil Cholli . Cholli received his PhD from University of Chicago in December 2022 where he completed his dissertation Essays on Social Policy Reforms and Human Capital . He is currently serving as a Klarman Fellow at Cornell University. 

Honorable Mentions Andrew King, University of Massachusetts, Boston Opening the Halls of Power: Implementing a Community Organizing Approach to Parent Engagement in New York City's Community Schools Paula Clasing, University of Michigan The Promise of Free Tuition: The Case of Chile  

Prior Winners

2021 - 2022.

Katharine Nelson, Housing Initiative at Penn (HIP) FHA and the Dual Mortgage Delivery System in Philadelphia

Honorable Mentions Hector Blanco, Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Economic Effects of Public Housing Programs Isabelle Cohen, University of California, Berkeley Essays on Public Finance and Development

2020 - 2021

George Zuo, University of Maryland Essays on Bridging Economic and Educational Disparities in America

Honorable Mentions Zachary Bleemer, University of California Berkeley On the Meritocratic Allocation of Higher Education Brandyn Churchill, Vanderbilt University Three Essays in Health Economics Ezra Karger, University of Chicago Essays on the Measurement of Income in Economic Analysis

Jun Li, University of Michigan Medicare Incentives, Payment Reform, and Quality in the Nursing Home Health Care Sector

2019 - 2020

Cody Tuttle, University of Maryland Government Responses to Crime and Racial Inequality

Honorable mentions Theresa Anderson, George Washington University What If Mom Went Back to School? A Mixed Methods Study of Effects and Experiences for Both Generations When Mothers Return to School

Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Harvard University Essays on the Economics of Education

2018 - 2019

Shiran Victoria Shen, Stanford University Political Pollution Cycle: An Inconvenient Truth and How to Break It

Honorable mentions: Patricio Dominiquez Rivera, Inter-American Development Bank and Elizabeth Pérez-Chiqués, CIDE

2017 - 2018

Garima Siwach, University at Albany, State University of New York Impact of Employment Barriers on Individuals with Criminal Records: An Econometric Evaluation of Criminal Records in New York Honorable mentions: Y. Nina Gao, University of Chicago and Allison C. Kelly, University of Washington

2016 - 2017

Mallory Flowers, Georgia Tech School of Public Policy Green Certification Pathways: The Roles of Public Goods, Private Goods and Certification Schemes Honorable mentions: Alan Zarychta, University of Colorado - Boulder

2015 - 2016

Vincent Reina, University of Southern California, Sol Price School of Public Policy The Impact of Mobility and Government Rental Subsidies on the Welfare of Households and Affordability of Markets Honorable mentions: Eric Roberts, John Hopkins University and Daniel Sebastian Tello-Trillo, Vanderbilt University

Manasi Deshpande, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Essays on the Effects of Disability Insurance Honorable mentions: Alexander Smith, University of Virginia and Gabriel Cardona-Fox, University of Texas, Austin

Anjali Adukia, Harvard University The Role of Basic Needs in Educational Decisions: Essays in Education and Development Economics Honorable mention: Sara Heller, University of Chicago

Sarah Anzia, University of California, Berkeley Election Timing and the Political Influence of the Organized Honorable mention: Hosung Sohn, University of California, Berkeley

Daeho Kim, Brown University

Essays in Health Economics

Honorable mentions:

Chloe Gibbs, University of Chicago

Christopher Robert, Harvard University JFK School of Government

Kurt Lavetti, University of California-Berkeley

Essays on the Estimation of Prices in Implicit Markets

Cassandra Marie Doll Hart, Northwestern University

Heidi Williams, MIT

Essays on Technological Change in Healthcare Markets

Kristin Seefeldt, University of Michigan

Judith Scott-Clayton, Harvard University JFK School of Government

2008 - 2009

Steven Hemelt, University of Maryland-Baltimore County

Essays in Education Policy: Accountability, Achievement, and Access

None recognized for this year

Haitao Yin, University of Pennsylvania

The Environmental and Economic Impacts of Environmental Regulations: The Case of Underground Storage Tank Regulations

Maria Fitzpatrick, University of Virginia

Jeremy Rosner, University of Maryland

Christopher Herbst, University of Maryland-College Park

Effects of Social Policy Reforms and the Economy on Welfare Participation and Employment of Single Mothers

Douglas Carr, University of Kentucky

Stephanie Cellini, University of California-Los Angeles

Kilkon Ko, University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs

Behaviors of Policy Analysts in Public Investment Decisions: How Policy Analysts Make Decisions

Leah Brooks, University of California-Los Angeles

Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, Northwestern University

Asim Zia, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy

Cooperative and Non-Cooperative Decision Behaviors in Response to the Inspection and Maintenance Program in the Atlanta Airshed, 1997-2001

Margaret Patrick Haist, University of Kentucky

Sergio Fernandez, University of Georgia

Shreyasi Jha, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Linkages Between Trade and Liberalization and Environmental Policy: Evidence from India

Zhong Yi Tong, University of Maryland

Jesse Levin, University of Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute

Rucker Johnson, University of Michigan

Essays on Urban Spatial Structure, Job Search and Job Mobility

R. Karl Rethemeyer, Harvard University JFK School of Government

Gail Corrado, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Mark Long, University of Michigan

The Effects of Education Policy on College Entry and Household Savings

Brian Jacob, University of Chicago

Katherine Magnuson, Northwestern University

Jacob Hacker, Yale University

Boundary Wars: Political Struggle Over Public and Private Social Benefits in the U.S.

Jean Marie Abraham, Carnegie Mellon University

Shanti Rabindran Gamper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Susanna Loeb, University of Michigan

Economic Analyses of Elementary and Secondary School Resource Provision

Laura J. Dugan, Carnegie Mellon University

Patrick McEwan, Stanford University

Meredith Phillips, Northwestern University

Early Inequalities: The Development of Ethnic Differences in Academic Achievement During Childhood

Karen Baehler, University of Maryland

Carol Silva, University of Rochester

Kevin Volpp, University of Pennsylvania

Market-based Reforms and the Impact on Quality of Care: An Examination of the Quality Impacts of the Transition from Hospital Rate-Setting to Price Competition in New Jersey

Kim Rueben, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Katherine Baicker, Harvard University JFK School of Government

Xavier De Souza Briggs, Harvard University JFK School of Government

Brown Kids in White Suburbs: Housing Mobility, Neighborhood Effects and the Social Capital of Poor Youth

Ingrid Gould Ellen, New York University

Rebecca London, Northwestern University

Sheila E. Murray, University of Maryland-College Park

Two Essays on the Distribution of Education Resources and Outcomes

Johannes M. Bos, New York University Wagner School of Public Service

The Labor Market Value of Remedial Education: Evidence from Time Series Data on an Experimental Program for School Dropouts

Kathryn A. Foster, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Special Districts and the Political Economy of Metropolitan Service Delivery

Thomas J. Nechyba, University of Rochester

Fiscal Federalism and Local Public Finance: A General Equilibrium Approach with Voting

Kenneth Langa, University of Chicago Harris School of Policy Studies

Medicaid Cost-Containment in the 1980s: Did It Encourage Interpayer Differences in Hospital Care

Thomas J. Kane, Harvard University JFK School of Government

College Entry by Blacks Since 1970: The Role of Tuition, Financial Aid, Local Economic Conditions and Family Background

About the 2019 Recipient: Shiran Victoria Shen, University of Virginia

IEEE AESS Robert T. Hill Best Dissertation Award

Award/recognition menu.

To recognize candidates that have recently received a Ph.D. degree and have written an outstanding Ph.D. dissertation in the Field of Interest of the Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society. Its purpose is to grant international recognition for the most outstanding Ph.D. dissertation by an AESS member.

Historical Background

Robert (Bob) Tyler Hill (1935 – 2014) was an electrical engineer and Life Fellow of the IEEE who pioneered the development of ship-borne phased array radar systems and championed international cooperation between radar engineers. After his retirement, Bob worked with great enthusiasm, energy and success as an educator and proponent of the radar art, showing particular dedication to nurturing and inspiring the next generation of young engineers. This AESS award was dedicated to rising young engineers was established and named after Robert Tyler Hill to honor his remarkable legacy in technical excellence, international collaboration, and professional education.

$1,000 USD honorarium and a plaque.

In the case of financial hardship, up to $1,500 in travel expenses can be authorized by the AES Society President for the recipient to attend the selected IEEE/AESS conference’s award ceremony.

Funded by the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society

At a convenient IEEE AESS conference

Noteworthy contributions in the AESS Field of Interest.

Must be a graduate of an accredited university which requires a dissertation to receive a Ph.D. degree. Must be an AESS member or student member in good standing at the time of nomination. Preferentially, the nominee should have been awarded the Ph.D. degree in the last 24 months prior to the nomination. The Ph.D. dissertation has to be deemed to have made a particularly noteworthy contribution in the AESS Field of Interest. The dissertation must be written in English. Translation from another language to English is allowed.

David Luong

In recognition of the Ph.D. dissertation “Quantum Radar Signal Processing"

Leonardo M. Millefiori

In recognition of the Ph.D. dissertation “Machine Learning and Data Fusion Methods for Enhanced Maritime Surveillance.

Joe Khalife

In recognition of the Ph.D. dissertation “Precise navigation with cellular signals: Receiver design, differential and non-differential frameworks, and performance analysis"

Francesca Filippini

In recognition of the Ph.D. dissertation: “Multichannel Passive Radar Systems: Signal Processing Techniques and Design Strategies"

Philipp Markiton

In recognition of the Ph.D. dissertation: "Passive Radar on Moving Platforms Exploiting DVB-T Transmitters of Opportunity"

Patrick McCormick

In recognition of the Ph.D. dissertation: “Design and Optimization of Physical Waveform-Diverse and Spatially-Diverse Radar Emissions"  

In recognition of the Ph.D. dissertation: “Topics in MIMO Radars: Sparse Sensing and Spectrum Sharing"

Shunqiao Sun

In recognition of the Ph.D. dissertation: “MIMO Radars with Sparse Sensing"

Bosung Kang

In recognition of the Ph.D. dissertation: “Robust Covariance Matrix Estimation for Radar Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP)"

Graduate School

• Request Information

Announcing the 2022 Graduate School Best Dissertation Award Winners

The graduate school is pleased to announce the 2022 best dissertation award winners.

Congratulations to the winners of the 2022 Best Dissertation Award ! A student from each of four groups – arts and humanities, biological and life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, and social sciences and education – was chosen by faculty from the broad disciplinary area. Selections were based on the originality and importance of the research, as well as the potential for the student to make an unusually significant contribution to their field.

ARTS & HUMANITIES 

Adey almohsen, history.

• Advisor: Daniel Schroeter
• Dissertation: On Modernism’s Edge: An Intellectual History of Palestinians After 1948
• Current Position: Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor, History Department, Grinnell College

BIOLOGICAL & MEDICAL SCIENCES

Erik faber, medicinal chemistry.

• Advisor: Gunda Georg
• Dissertation: Development of Allosteric Inhibitors against Cyclin-dependent Kinase 2 (CDK2)
• Current Position: MD/PhD Student, University of Minnesota - Medical School

PHYSICAL SCIENCES & ENGINEERING

Xiaowei jia, cognitive science.

• Advisor: Vipin Kumar
• Dissertation: Integrating Physics into Machine Learning for Monitoring Scientific Systems
• Current Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh

SOCIAL SCIENCES & EDUCATION

Kristin crouse, anthropology.

• Advisor: Michael Wilson, Co-Advisor: Clarence Lehman
• Dissertation: B3GET: A new computational approach for understanding and exploring ecology, evolution, and behavior
• Current Position: Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota

HONORABLE MENTIONS

• Huarui Cui, Chemistry, Advisor: Will Pomerantz
• Alexander Everhart, Health Services Research, Policy, & Administration, Advisor: Pinar Karaca Mandic
• McKinley Green, Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication, Advisor: Patrick Bruch
• Devika Narayan, Sociology, Advisor: Michael Goldman, Co-Advisor: Rachel Schurman  
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Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award

The Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award is given in recognition of development of professional excellence by persons writing doctoral dissertations in any field consistent with the AAEA vision statement . A maximum of three awards are given each year, and a $1000 cash prize accompanies each award.

Nomination Guidelines

Nominations are due on February 4, 2024.

• The nominator must be a 2024 AAEA member.
• One nomination may be submitted for every 12 doctoral dissertations of a department that were presented to a graduate school faculty in the calendar year preceding the year of recognition. Selection will be made from documentation approved in final form by the student's advisory committee. Departments should limit nomination consideration to dissertations in fields consistent with the vision statement.
• A published dissertation may be entered for the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award as well as other AAEA Annual Awards but is only eligible to win one award that year.

To nominate, fill out the online Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award Nomination Form linked below. The form will ask you to upload one PDF file containing all the Award Nomination Materials in the order listed below.

Award Nomination Materials

Nomination Letter

• Maximum of three single spaced pages
• Concise statement summarizing the reasons why the nominee is worthy of the award.

Copy of the dissertation

• Electronic format is preferred.
• If materials must be submitted in hard copy form, nine copies of the publication should be sent to the AAEA Business Office at 555 E. Wells Street, Suite 1100, Milwaukee, WI 53202.

Please submit this completed form as well as any nomination materials to https://form.jotform.com/232705562442150

If you have any questions about your nomination, or the nomination process, please contact Michael Storey at [email protected] or (414) 918-3190.

202 2 SIGHPC Doctoral Dissertation Award Winner 

2022 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award Winner, Dr. Maciej Besta of ETH  Zürich

Recognized for his dissertation " Enabling High-Performance Large-Scale Irregular Computations ”

202 2 SIGHPC Doctoral Dissertation Award Winner  

ACM's Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing (SIGHPC) is pleased to announce that Dr. Maciej Besta of ETH Zürich has won the 2022 SIGHPC Doctoral Dissertation Award. This award is given each year for the best doctoral dissertation completed in high performance computing (HPC) in the previous year, and includes a $2,000 cash prize, a plaque, and recognition at the International Supercomputing Conference (SC’XY) in November. Nominations were evaluated on technical depth, the significance of the research contribution, the potential impact on theory and practice, and overall quality of work.

This year’s award is presented for outstanding contributions that demonstrate how to simultaneously achieve high performance, large scale, and programmability in highly challenging and relevant irregular computations. Dr. Besta’s dissertation, titled “ Enabling High-Performance Large-Scale Irregular Computations ” is noted not only for the significant contributions it made to the field, but also the depth and thoroughness of the work.

Dr. Besta received his PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zürich in 2021. He received the Best student paper award at SC19 for his paper titled “ Red-Blue Pebbling Revisited: Near Optimal Parallel Matrix Multiplication ”.

“I want to thank SIGHPC for this wonderful recognition,” said Dr. Besta. “Irregular computations are an important part of today's compute landscape, underlying domains such as graph databases, graph neural networks, graph pattern matching, or graph streaming. I hope that my dissertation will contribute to increasing their performance, scale, and cost as well as power effectiveness. I also want to thank my thesis advisor and mentor, Torsten Hoefler, for his amazing support.”

“The breadth and depth of Dr. Besta’s dissertation truly highlights his innovations in and passion for the field of High-Performance Computing. We are thrilled to grant this year’s Dissertation Award to such a strong and well-formed body of research that exemplifies the kind of work that makes our community more effective and raises the standards of the profession,” said Christine Harvey, SIGHPC Chair. “The applicant pool was made up of outstanding recent PhDs, whom we hope will continue to contribute to HPC techniques and technologies in the future.”

Award Information

Information

How to Nominate

Previous Winners

2022 Winner

2021 Winner

2020 Winner

2018 Winner

Dr. Kazem Cheshmi,

2022 Honorable Mention

Honorable Mention

In addition, SIGHPC selected one submission for Honorable Mention in the 2022 Dissertation Award.

Dr. Kazem Cheshmi (University of Toronto) was selected for contributions to the efficient code generation and transformation of sparse computations for parallel architectures. He is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University.

IEEE ITS Best Dissertation Award

The IEEE ITS Best Dissertation Award is given annually for the best dissertation in any ITS area that is innovative and relevant to practice.

Description

The IEEE ITSS Best Dissertation Award is given annually for the best dissertation in any ITS area that is innovative and relevant to practice. This award is established to encourage doctoral research that combines theory and practice, makes in-depth technical contributions, or is interdisciplinary in nature, having the potential to contribute to the ITSS and broaden the ITS topic areas from either the methodological or application perspectives. (Established in 2017)

Three awards to be given annually for first, second and third place – Each recipient receives the full prize based on ranking. First Place receives $2000, Second Place $1000, and Third Place $500. In case of a two- or three-way tie, the prize awards for the two or three prizes at issue will be summed and divided equally among the winning candidates. No travel allowances are made for the award.

Eligibility

Eligible applicants must have written a doctoral dissertation and received a Ph.D. no more than 18 months prior to the submission. Students of sitting selection committee members are should be excluded from eligibility.

Basis for Judging

Submissions are evaluated based on the dissertation’s 1) technical contributions, 2) significance, 3) the quality of publication record, and 4) the quality of recommendation letters. Each category is scored on a 1-10 scale and summed for a total score averaged among committee members during the first round. The second round of scoring ranks the top submissions for final award after committee discussion.

Presentation

The award is presented during the banquet during the society’s flagship meeting, the Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference.

Past Awardees

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CSE Best PhD Dissertation Award (2021-22)

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Eligibility

Current and former students who have been awarded the Ph.D., or who have successfully defended and officially submitted their dissertations to the HKUST Fok Ying Tung Graduate School within the period of the preceding academic year (Aug 31, 2022) will be eligible to be nominated.

Important Dates*

• Jan 31, 2023: Deadline of Submission of Nomination Package
• Mar 1, 2023: Results Announcement

*A special arrangement is made up for graduates during the academic year of 2021-2022 in this round of nomination. The nominations for this award for the proceeding academic year will be due by late Sept, and the result will be announced by late Oct.

Evaluation Criteria and Process

• Importance of the topic
• Significance and impact of the work
• Originality and creativity of the concept
• Quality and skill of expression

Submission Requirements

• including the name of nominee, name of advisor, research area, dissertation title and date of degree award (or date of thesis submitted)
• in non-technical language of the purpose, problem(s), methods, results of the research and its significance within the discipline of this dissertation
• Abstract of the nominee's dissertation
• Letter of recommendation from the advisor (mandatory)
• Letter of recommendation from a thesis committee member (mandatory)
• Letter of recommendation from a person of the applicant's choice (optional)
• Including a publication list with justification on the quality of the venues

Online Submission

Online Submission (Closed)

Selection and Prizes

The Best Dissertation Selection Committee will identify a CSE Best PhD Dissertation Award and Honorable Mention(s) (optional, depending on the number and quality of submissions):

• The CSE Best PhD Dissertation Award recipient will receive a certificate plus an honorarium
• The Honorable Mention(s) recipient, if identified, will receive certificate(s)

Winners are required to present at the award ceremony to introduce their work and accomplishments. The presentation will be videotaped and archived by the Department for future use.

Award announcement

CSE Best PhD Dissertation Award Archive

Last updated on 2023-07-28

School of Chemistry & Biochemistry

College of sciences, kejun yin wins sigma xi best ph.d. thesis award.

Mar 21, 2024 - Atlanta, GA

Kejun Yin, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the laboratory of Prof. Ronghu Wu in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been awarded the 2024 Sigma Xi prize for Best Ph.D. Thesis. Selected by a committee of faculty in the College of Engineering, the award consists of a certificate, a plaque, and a $1,000 monetary prize. Kejun's research concerned the use of proteomics to gain insight into the structure and function of proteins. He writes:

"Since the emergence of shotgun proteomics, the global-scale quantification of proteins and distinctive proteoforms has found wide applications. In recent years, increasing approaches have emerged to extract insights into protein structure, termed structural proteomics, and demonstrated their ability to systematically reveal protein conformation, folding state, protein-ligand interaction, and protein complex composition. Despite the aforementioned advances, the field of structural proteomics is still constrained by limited tools when confronting special modifications. Moreover, explaining observed structural alterations remains challenging because a wide range of factors can impact protein structure. Addressing these issues requires new strategies to be utilized in structural proteomics investigation. My thesis work included the utilization and refinement of existing structural proteomics strategies. I systematically quantified proteome structural changes induced by drugs and glycosylation, offering fresh insights into cellular responses. The methods developed in this thesis prove valuable for investigating system-wide protein structures. The insights gained, including drug modes of action, off-target effects, and the novel role of glycosylation in influencing cellular biological processes, contribute to an enhanced understanding of their functions, with potential implications for the fields of biology and biomedicine."

Yin is the third recent winner of this prize from the Wu laboratory, joining Haopeng Xiao (2019) and Suttipong Suttapitugsakul (2022).

Michael Evans, Ph.D. Senior Academic Professional

• Faculty Experts

TXST doctoral students receive Phi Kappa Phi dissertation fellowships, graduate research grants

STUDENT EXPERIENCE

The Graduate College | April 3, 2024

Two Texas State University doctoral students have been selected as winners of the Dissertation Fellowship from the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. This highly competitive, $10,000 national fellowship is awarded annually to only 15 active society members who are doctoral candidates and are completing dissertations.

This year marks the second time that TXST has had two Phi Kappa Phi Dissertation Fellowship recipients in a single year — 13% of the 2024 awardee pool for this prestigious national award — and the third year in a row that TXST doctoral students have received this award.

The award provides financial support during the dissertation writing process to candidates in all fields of study whose projects demonstrate a high degree of originality and significant potential for advancing knowledge in the candidates’ disciplines.

2024 Texas State Phi Kappa Phi Dissertation Fellowship awardees

Elisabeth Cuerrier-Richer, applied anthropology major, researches the cranial variation of Latin Americans from skeletal collections in the United States, Mexico, and other Central and South American countries. Notably, Cuerrier-Richer previously received both the Graduate Research Grant and Love of Learning Award from Phi Kappa Phi in 2023, making her the second student from TXST to have received all three of these awards from Phi Kappa Phi.

Applied anthropology major Shelby Garza researches differences in how cortical and trabecular bone structure responds to varying activity patterns and mechanical loading in identified human skeletons to improve current forensic identification methods.

“I am impressed that our Phi Kappa Phi students are consistently recognized every year for their significant research accomplishments,” said Kambra Bolch , J.D., TXST’s Phi Kappa Phi chapter president. “We are proud to have them represent our chapter and Texas State University so well at the national level.”

Two additional doctoral students in applied anthropology, Hilda Torres and Sameeha Vardhan, received Graduate Research Grants from Phi Kappa Phi during the 2024 competition. Annually awarded to only 20 applicants, these grants provide up to $1,500 to support graduate students who are conducting or presenting research.

“These four Phi Kappa Phi awardees demonstrate that Texas State cultivates and nurtures outstanding graduate students engaged in highly intellectual, significant, and original research,” said Andrea Golato , Ph.D., dean of The Graduate College. “We hope that more graduate students from all fields of study will engage with our extensive external funding support services.”

Visit The Graduate College website for more information about available programs, resources, and external funding .

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CIB Best Doctoral Dissertation award 2023 winner and runners-up celebrated

Following a round of presentations to a panel of judges, CIB is delighted to announce the winner of the Best Doctoral Dissertation award 2023 is Luca Rampini from Politecnico di Milano student chapter.

In addition, the evaluation committe has awarded two runners-up prizes of 500€ to Nourhan Heysham and Buddhini Ginigaddara .

Luca’s research dissertation ‘Artificial intelligence enhances digital asset management’ was highly acclaimed by the judges.

The annual competition now in it’s third year, is awarded in recognition of researchers whose PhD is considered worthy taking into consideration the importance of the built environment issue, writing style, readability and flow, methodology and the contribution of the research.

On winning the award Luca said

“I am deeply honored to receive the CIB Best Doctoral Dissertation Award 2023. This award not only recognizes the academic effort but also highlights the significance of my research in the Built Environment. Participating in CIB Student Chapters and being part of this award process has been incredibly enriching, offering exposure to great ideas and research methodologies. It has also provided a unique platform to connect with a global network of talented peers and professionals, allowing me to learn from them and share insights. I am grateful for the opportunity to showcase my work, receive valuable feedback, and engage with other exceptional researchers. This award is a reminder of the collective commitment to innovation and the continual growth it brings to emerging researchers like myself.”

The presentations by the 5 shortlisted candidates took place on the 4th December before a panel of judges and an audience of engaged members.

The CIB judging panel consisted of Keith Hampson , Billy Hare and Casimir Macgregor, who noted the quality of all the shortlisted dissertations.

” We congratulate all the finalists and Dr Luca Rampini and his host institution Politecnico di Milano in particular. The CIB Best Doctoral Dissertation award is an important opportunity for young researchers in the built environment to share their work with senior peers around the world, raise their profile, and make valuable connections. It is also great experience in how to communicate the value of research to audiences who may not be expert in the field of study. This is a vital skill if we are to help government policy-makers and industry improve their decisions and practices.” CIB Chief Executive Don Ward

The awarding of two runners-up prizes demonstrated the quality of the dissertations submitted and the high standard of work from CIB student chapters and the ECR network.

“I am truly grateful for the honour of being a part of the prestigious CIB Best Doctoral Dissertation Award 2023. Having such a platform to showcase our hard work and receive valuable feedback from an international audience is incredible. Thank you, CIB for this opportunity” Buddhini Ginigaddara

It is an honour to be part of CIB’s pursuit to recognise significant research contributions in Built Environment research around the globe. I am proud to share the impacts of my research on Climate Resilient Social Capital Networks with the academic community, amplified by CIB’s Award recognition. As a previous President of CIB Student Chapter and current CIB ECR Network member, I am glad to advance through my career stages with continuous exposure and support provided by CIB’s global umbrella. I hope this is a motivation to my fellow chapter members who I have passed on the chapter torch to, to seek note-worthy impact in their research by CIB and beyond.  Nourhan Heysham

The shortlisted candidates were:

• Naomi Borg  – RMIT Student Chapter Dissertation title: An Exploratory Study of Career Resilience: Future-Proofing the Project Management Profession for the 21st Century
• Luca Rampini  – Politecnico di Milano Student Chapter Dissertation title: Artificial Intelligence Enhances Digital Asset Management
• S amudaya Nanayakkara  – Western Sydney University Student Chapter Dissertation title: Developing a Blockchain Based Digital Procurement Framework for Construction Supply Chains
• Nourhan Heysham  – University of Salford Student Chapter Dissertation title: Investigating Geospatial Social Capital Networks for Industry-based Grassroot Economies: The Case of Damietta
• Buddhini Ginigaddara  – Western Sydney University Student Chapter Dissertation title: Developing a Skill Profile Prediction Model for Typologies of Offsite Construction

Congratulations to all the Best Doctoral Dissertation shortlisted candidates on their excellent work.

A recording of all the presentations can be viewed in the video recording of the event

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Institute of Brand and Innovation Law

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UCL LLM graduate, Dheemanth Vangimalla, wins an international research essay prize

3 April 2024

UCL Laws LLM graduate, Dheemanth Vangimalla, wins the top award in the 4iP Council Research Awards 2023 for a paper based on his LLM research dissertation.

We are delighted to announce that Dheemanth Vangimalla, a recent UCL Laws graduate of the LLM in Intellectual Property Law has received the top award in the prestigious 4iP Council Research Awards for 2023 for his paper entitled ‘Plausibility and the flotilla: have the English courts drifted from the commodore’s approach to the evidential requirement for patent validity, and if so, is this divergence justified?’

The 4iP Council Research Award is an international research competition for European University students studying at Masters and PhD levels. It seeks to promote new ideas on topics pertinent to the interplay between intellectual property rights and innovation. Submissions, based on a student’s Masters or PhD research, are assessed by 4iP Council’s Research Award Jury made up of intellectual property experts from academia, government and industry. The papers are evaluated based on criteria including:

• Original thinking that broadens the debate on the chosen topic;
• High quality written expression; and
• Relevance to current IP problems and debate

and up to three prizes are awarded (winner and two runners-up).

In his winning paper, Dheemanth considered the origins of ‘plausibility’ and explored the evidential requirement that the term represents. His research revealed that there is divergence between the EPO and English courts in the evidential standard applied by the two decision-making bodies when assessing patent validity. He argues that the English courts adopting a higher standard lacks cogent justification as the standard neither reflects a balance between the competing objectives of the patent system nor limits a plausibility assessment to its targeted mischief. 

This paper was based on Dheemanth’s dissertation for his LLM in Intellectual Property Law, which was also recently awarded the IBIL Prize for Top Performance in an IP-related Research Essay on the LLM . During his LLM, Dheemanth was supervised by our IBIL scholarship PhD researcher, Joshua Bradley .

As part of the prize, the winning essay has been published on 4iP Council’s website , which will be accompanied by a podcast interview with the winners in due course.

Having completed his LLM in the summer of 2023, Dheemanth has been working as a Research Assistant at the UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law  (IBIL), while also completing his bar exams. He will join Three New Square Chambers in the autumn as a pupil barrister.

• Read Dheemanth’s paper here .
• Find out more about the 4iP Council Research Awards .