Stanford undergrads awarded Firestone and Golden Medals and Kennedy Thesis Prizes

Thirty-five winners representing 27 undergraduate departmental and interdisciplinary honors programs were recently honored for outstanding research theses and creative arts projects. These students were awarded the 2022 Firestone and Golden medals, and four of them also received the Kennedy Honors Thesis prizes. A luncheon was hosted to celebrate the winners on the afternoon of Saturday, June 11, at the Ford Gardens—the first in-person event honoring winners of the thesis medals since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Firestone and Golden Medals are awarded to the top 10 percent of honors theses completed each year. The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research recognizes theses written in the social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. The Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts similarly distinguishes theses in the humanities or creative projects in the arts. The awardees each received an engraved bronze medal and a monetary award.
The David M. Kennedy Prize is awarded annually to the single best thesis in each of four academic areas: humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering & applied sciences. Recipients of this award have accomplished exceptionally advanced research in the field and have shown strong potential for publication in peer-reviewed scholarly works. The prize was established in 2008 in recognition of history professor David M. Kennedy’s long-standing mentoring of undergraduate writers. Winners each received an engraved plaque and a monetary award.
The projects conducted by the winners capture the breadth of the undergraduate experience at Stanford and span diverse academic areas, from the sciences to the arts.

David M. Kennedy Honors Thesis Prizes

Engineering and Applied Sciences: Soo Hyun (Francesca) Kim, Biomedical Computation. “Minimally Invasive Optogenetics Across Physiological Systems.” Mentored by Karl Deisseroth and Liqun Luo
Arts & Humanities: Ekalan Hou, Art & Art History. “Pockets of Becoming: The Photography of Mary Tape, Lai Yong, and Frank Jue.” Mentored by Marci Kwon
Natural Sciences: Carissa Anne Lee, Human Biology. “Multimodal Mapping of Cardiac Cell Types Throughout Mammalian Embryonic Development.” Mentored by Sean Wu, Julie Baker, and Francisco Galdos
Social Sciences: Maria Clara Rodrigues da Silva, Economics. “Differential Treatment of Politically Connected Labor Traffickers: Evidence from the Brazilian Dirty List of Slave Labor.” Mentored by Grant Miller

Firestone Medals for Excellence in Undergraduate Research

Coen Rhys Richard Armstrong, Mathematics. “Maps of Stein Manifolds without k-multiple points, k ≤ 4.” Mentored by Yakov Eliashberg
Veronica Ayala, Science, Technology, & Society (STS). “It Takes a Village… and More: Southeast Los Angeles as a Model for Alleviating Infrastructure Deficits and Environmental Injustices Through Community-Based Resistance.” Mentored by Sibyl Diver
Justin-Casimir Braun, International Relations. “Germany’s Changing ‘Boundary of Belonging’: Anti-Immigrant Attitudes amidst the Refugee Crisis of 2015.” Mentored by Vasiliki Fouka
Angela Gomez, Sociology. “Conscientizar: The Development and Enactment of Sociopolitical Consciousness and Critical Hopefulness in Salinas Youth Activists.”
Mentored by David Grusky
Jessica Gonzalez, Political Science. “The Impact of Hispanic Ethnicity on Vote Choice.” Mentored by Jon A. Krosnick
Emmett Hough, Physics. “Novel Techniques to Measure Micron-Scale Gravity.” Mentored by Giorgio Gratta
Deborah J. Jantz, Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). “Battlegrounds to Bipartisanship: The Effect of Military Experience on Bipartisanship in the U.S. Congress.” Mentored by Scott Sagan and Joseph Felter
Stewart Kim, Biology. “Identification of a Myogenic and Highly Transplantable Tert Expressing Non-Satellite Stem Cell Population.” Mentored by Steven Artandi
Sayeh Kohani, Bioengineering. “Molecular Gradients Instruct Dendritic Targeting of Olfactory Projection Neurons.” Mentored by Liqun Luo
Zixian Ma, Computer Science. “Towards More Effective Multi-agent Coordination via Alignment.” Mentored by Fei-Fei Li
Patrick Joseph Monreal, Earth Systems Program. “Identifying the sources and drivers of variable nitrous oxide concentrations across the Eastern Tropical North Pacific.” Mentored by Karen Casciotti
Saketh Prazad, Economics. “Fed Transparency: A Sentiment Analysis Approach.” Mentored by Matthew Gentzkow and John B. Taylor
Maia Louise Rocklin, Psychology. “Smartphones and Emotion: Assessing Ability of AI to Rate Valence and Arousal of Smartphone Content.” Mentored by Nilam Ram
Adrian Scheibler, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law (CDDRL). “Challenging the State: Western European Regionalism in the Era of Financial Crisis.” Mentored by Christophe Crombez and Stephen Stedman
Sofia Schlozman, Human Biology. “Exploring Medical Student Perspectives on Mental Health Self-Disclosure.” Mentored by Jennifer Wolf, Lars Osterberg, and Aliya Kassam
Rex Shen, Mathematical and Computational Sciences (MCS). “A Seasonality-Adjusted Sequential Test for Vaccine Safety Surveillance.” Mentored by Lu Tian
Miley Sinantha-Hu, Biology. “Proteomic Profiling of Purkinje Cell Surface Reveals the Critical Role of Armadillo-like helical domain containing protein 4 in Mammalian Dendrite Morphogenesis.” Mentored by Liqun Luo
Neha Srivathsa, Computer Science. “Multimodal, Self-Supervised Deep Learning-Based Estimation of Symptoms and Severity of Depression and Anxiety.” Mentored by Fei-Fei Li and Ehsan Adeli
Isabel Z. Wang, Symbolic Systems. “Hope for Caregiver and Child Health Under Lockdown: Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Changing Landscape of Caregiver Outcomes, Caregiving Behaviors, and Health Services Utilization in Rural China.” Mentored by Scott Rozelle and Gary Darmstadt
Julien Minoru Wright-Ueda, Biology. “Long-term avian responses to drought and urbanization in Northern California.” Mentored by Rodolfo Dirzo

Robert M. Golden Medals for Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts

Hagar Gal, History. “Aswim in a Sea of Poppies: Opium Challenges the English Empire, 1827-1910.” Mentored by Thomas S. Mullaney
Morgan Tom Gwilym Tso, Theater & Performance Studies (TAPS). Acting in “As Soon As Impossible.” Mentored by Samer Al-Saber
Sequoiah Hippolyte, African and African American Studies. “Decolonizing Desire: Pleasure as a Framework for Constructing a Black-Womanist Cinematic Gaze.” Mentored by Aileen Robinson
Jeevanjot Singh Kapur, Theater & Performance Studies (TAPS). “Modified Digital Forum Theater—A Novel Approach for Improving Communication and Reducing Acculturative Family Distancing in Immigrant Families.” Mentored by Michael Rau and Shashank Joshi
Didier Natalizi Baldi, Classics. “Weaving Classical Poetry in Modern England: The Latin and Greek Verse of Thomas Gray.” Mentored by Christopher B. Krebs
Lily Nilipour, English. “A Sentence of One’s Own: An Algorithmic Approach to Punctuation in the Novels of Virginia Woolf.” Mentored by Alex Woloch
Vrinda Madabushi Suresh and Jenna Wang, Arts Institute. (un)grounded. Mentored by Jessi Piggott and Amy Elkins
Paige Warmington, Art Practice. Boyhood Fabricated and Boyhood Received. Mentored by Jonathan Calm
Cybele Athena Zhang, English. “Allegations: The Proto-Public Sphere and the Figure of the Female Accused (1550-1640).” Mentored by Esther Yu
Matthew Haide Zheng, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. “The Hill Beyond Community: A Political Ethnography of Spectacular Intimacy in Queer D.C.” Mentored by Sylvia Yanagisako and Margaret Levi