2026 Award Winners
Award for Artistic Excellence
Emma Deng: Allow Access to All Photos? (Advisors: Sharmistha Ray, Golan Levin)
Kat Kadewari: RAGEBAIT (Advisor: Sharmistha Ray)
Avery Lavine: Setting (Advisor: Marissa Glase)
Brook Xiao: Belcanto Hub (Advisor: Stephanie Murray)
Dietrich Humanities Prize
Riley Lawrence, Lou Feng: The Effects of Voicing on Fricative Production in English (Advisor: Christine Bjorndahl)
Samantha Mahler: A Collection of Stories Concerning Change (Advisor: Sharon Dilworth)
Mateo Ruiz-Lea, Varsha Gaddami, Gianna Amaro: The Highland Detention Contract: Reforming Procurement and Juvenile Justice in Allegheny County (Advisor: Danielle Wenner)
Hannah Wyatt: Trigger Happy (Advisor: Rod Piza)
Moore Family Fund for Underwriting Creativity, Knowledge, Experimentation, Research and Yumminess
Aren Davey: Expansion of Crochet Stitch Mesh Functionality (Advisor: Jim McCann)
Psychology Award
Best Oral Presentations
Hilary Alonso: Math in Motion: Ballet as a Patterning Intervention for PreK/Kindergarteners’ Mathematical Development (Advisor: Sharon Carver)
Matthew Martino: Visual Processing Speeds of Real World Actions (Advisor: Brad Mahon)
Best Poster Presentation
Eric Parker: Is Our Ability to Listen to One Conversation Impacted by an Acoustically and Linguistically Similar Conversation Nearby? (Advisor: Abby Noyce)
Sigma Xi Poster Competition
First Place: Sean Borneman: Ancilla Free Quantum Circuit Implementation of Module LWE Encryption (Advisor: Elias Towe)
Second Place: Caroline Vernon: Histological Analysis of 3D Bioprinted Contractile Heart Conduits of Treatment of Single Ventricular Heart Disease (Advisors: Adam Feinberg, Amanda Kang, Marianna Guzman Seda)
Third Place: Vanessa Wu: Simulation-Guided Design of Tetrahedral Framework Nucleic Acid for Enhanced Mechanical Stability (Advisor: Rebecca Taylor)
Statistics Competition
Best Oral Presentation: Adarsh Suresh: Improving Expected Threat Modeling in Soccer (Advisors: Ron Yurko, Peter Stuettgen)
1st Place Poster Presentation: Smrithi Krishnaswamy and Helen Peng: Developmental Trajectories of Racial Attitudes in Young Children (Advisor: Rebecca Farina)
2nd Place Poster Presentation: Jiayi Chen, Mandi Niu, Avery Sun, and Jane Wu: Flagger Health: Predicting Patient Drop-Off (Advisor: Joel Greenhouse)
3rd Place Poster Presentation: Ellyse Lai: Harnessing Longitudinal Claims Data to Reveal Predictive Signals for Clinical Event Forecasting (Advisor: Artur Dubrawski)
Undergraduate Environmental Award
Winner: Ben Munkres: Robust Bioacoustic Event Localization for Ad-Hoc Field Recorder Arrays (Advisor: Richard Stern)
Runners-Up:
Michelle Guo: Causal Evaluation of Public Safety Power Shutoffs for Wildfire Mitigation (Advisor: Woody (Shixiang) Zhu)
Keenan Norton: Cleaning Up After Pharma: Catalytic Degradation of Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) via NewTAML/H2_O2 Treatment (Advisor: Xiaowei Ma)
Peyton Putnam: Photochemical Fate of Ciprofloxacin in Surface Waters (Advisor: Ryan Sullivan)