The ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award recognizes exceptional and unusually interesting work produced by doctoral students. Each year Rackham invites faculty to nominate the dissertations produced in their programs that were outstanding. The nomination dossiers submitted then are read and discussed by a review panel of faculty members who identify the finalists. Then, members of the Michigan Society of Fellows read the finalists’ dissertations, review the merits, and select the winners. Listed here as well are the Distinguished Dissertation Award honorable mentions, who also produced outstanding and noteworthy dissertations.
The recipients of this year’s dissertation awards are:
Distinguished Dissertation Award Winners
Lauren Cleeves, Astronomy
Lauren Cline, Natural Resources and the Environment
Alix Gould-Werth, Sociology and Social Work
Konstantina Karageorgos, English Language and Literature
Brian Metzger, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Davide Orsini, Anthropology and History
Maxwell Radin, Physics
Charles Sebens, Philosophy
Brandon Seward, Mathematics
Bai Song, Mechanical Engineering
Distinguished Dissertation Award Honorable Mentions
Rabia Belt, American Culture
Ewa Czyz, Psychology
Pablo Damasceno Souza, Applied Physics
Alex Holtz, Cellular and Molecular Biology
Geoffrey Hughes, Anthropology
Elizabeth Kamali, History
Carl Pfeiffer, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Richard Pierre, Comparative Literature
Yubing Sun, Mechanical Engineering
Shaosui Xu, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences