Announcing the 2021 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award Winners

The ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards (DDA) recognize exceptional work produced by doctoral students for the high caliber of their scholarship and the significance and interest of their findings.

Each year, Rackham invites faculty to nominate outstanding dissertations produced in their programs. The nomination dossiers 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 their merits, and select the winners.

Rackham is continually grateful to ProQuest for their generous and longstanding support of the DDA program.

Below is the list of 2021 winners, as well as the honorable mentions.

Winners (Pictured above, clockwise from top left.)

• Mikel Haggadone, Immunology
• Yinqiu He, Statistics
• Eshita Khera, Chemical Engineering
• Cindy Lin Kaiying, Information
• Rebecca Marks, Education and Psychology
• Michelle May-Curry, American Culture
• Zhijie Qu, Astronomy
• Akshitha Sriraman, Computer Science & Engineering
• Mei Ling Meilina Tsui, Music Composition
• Erica Twardzik, Movement Science

Honorable Mentions

• Sangmin Choi, Physics
• Zehra Hashmi, Anthropology and History
• Mary Hennessy, Germanic Languages & Literatures
• Yael Kenan, Comparative Literature
• Rohith Mittapally, Mechanical Engineering
• Abhijit Parolia, Molecular and Cellular Pathology
• Nicole Rockey, Civil and Environmental Engineering (Environmental Engineering)
• Niloufar Salehi, Chemical Engineering and Pharmaceutical Sciences
• Matthew Villeneuve, History
• Xin Zhang, Mathematics

Read the event program for details on the awardees’ research.