Announcing the 2025 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 2025 winners, as well as the honorable mentions.

Winners (Pictured above, clockwise from top left)

• Jason Byas, Philosophy
• So-Bin Cho, Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences
• Benjamin Goehring, Public Policy and Political Science
• Maximilian Jerdee, Physics
• Jianhao Ma, Industrial and Operations Engineering
• Aditya Varma Muppala, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Joshua Schulze, Film, Television, and Media
• Siliang Song, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
• Bibi Alika Sulaman, Neuroscience
• Meixin Yuan, Urban and Regional Planning

Honorable Mentions

• Christopher Azaldegui, Chemical Biology
• Sanjana Eyunni, Molecular and Cellular Pathology
• Jiajia Guo, Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics
• Martha Henzy, English Language and Literature
• Yasha Iravantchi, Computer Science and Engineering
• Owen Kay, Public Policy and Economics
• Alex Moskowitz, Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology
• Sangli Teng, Robotics
• Mira Vale, Sociology
• Katja Vassilev, Mathematics

Read the event program for more details on each awardee’s research.