outstanding thesis award

Graduate Writing Center

Outstanding theses / dissertations - graduate writing center, outstanding theses / dissertations.

The NPS Institutional Archive, Calhoun, maintains a collection of  NPS Outstanding Theses and Dissertations —those that have received the Outstanding Thesis Award.

To filter by department, year, advisor, and other categories, leave the search bar empty and click the "Go" button, then select from the options at the right.

Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award

AY 2024-2025

Uis outstanding master’s thesis/project award, nomination guidelines:.

Each graduate faculty member at UIS can nominate  one  student for the Outstanding Thesis/Project award program. The faculty member's nomination must be accompanied by a letter explaining the reasons for the nomination. The letter may comment on issues such as the breadth of conceptualization, the depth of the analysis, the significance of the results, and/or the originality of the idea underlying the thesis/project. If the nominated work is a project, the letter should highlight the purpose and nature of the project, as well as its importance to the student's course of study.

The Research Board may recommend that a master’s thesis be entered into the Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award program of the  Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools .

To be eligible for this year's award, the student must have graduated in Fall 2023, Spring 2024, or Summer 2024. An electronic form, a nomination letter, and an electronic copy of the nominated thesis or project must be sent to  Thesis/Project Nomination  by  11:59 p.m. on Monday, September 9, 2024.  Documents received after the deadline may not be accepted.

The UIS Research Board will select the outstanding thesis or project based on the criteria described below. The selected author and honorable mention awardees will be recognized at the 2025 Student Technology, Arts & Research Symposium (STARS), with an opportunity for the awardees to present their research.

Questions regarding this process should be directed to the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at [email protected].

Nomination Material and Criteria

Nomination guidelines.

Faculty nominating a former student must complete a nomination WebForm  and include:

• a list of closure committee members on the manuscript’s title page and
• the nominated student’s current contact information
• explain the reasons for the nomination,
• note whether the nominated piece is a thesis or a project,
• comment on issues such as the breadth of conceptualization, the depth of the analysis, the significance of the results, and/or the originality of the idea underlying the thesis/project, and
• be signed by the thesis chair.
• If the nominated work is a project, the letter should highlight the purpose and nature of the project, as well as its importance to the student’s course of study.
•  a note from the student indicating that they accept their faculty mentor’s nomination and are willing to be considered for further award nominations. The Research Board may recommend a master’s thesis be entered into the  Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award  program of the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools.

Evaluation Criteria

Clear goals.

• Does the scholar state the basic purposed of his or her work clearly?
• Does the scholar define objectives that are realistic and achievable?
• Does the scholar identify important questions in the field?

Adequate Preparation

• Does the scholar show an understanding of existing scholarship in the field?
• Does the scholar bring the necessary skills to his or her work?
• Does the scholar bring together the resources necessary to move the project forward?

Appropriate Methods

• Does the scholar use methods appropriate to the goals?
• Does the scholar apply effectively the methods selected?
• Does the scholar modify procedures in response to changing circumstances?

Significant Results

• Does the scholar achieve the goals?
• Does the scholars’ work add consequentially to the field?
• Does the scholar’s work open additional areas for further exploration?

Effective Presentation

• Does the scholar use a suitable style and effective organization to present his or her work?
• Does the scholar use appropriate forums for communicating work to its intended audiences?
• Does the scholar present his or her message with clarity and integrity?

Reflective Critique

• Does the scholar critically evaluate his or her own work?
• Does the scholar bring an appropriate breadth of evidence to his or her critique?
• Does the scholar use evaluation to improve the quality of future work?

Current and Prior Winners

2022-2023 : Connor Krater, History

2021-2022 : Andrew Stokes, Environmental Studies

2020-2021 : Angela Try, Communications

2019-2020 : Nicholas Dabbs, English and Modern Language

2018-2019 : Rashaun DeBord, History

2017-2018 : Sarah Lindholm, Biology

2016-2017 : J. Mark Redding, History

2015-2016 : Amelia Owre, Environmental Studies

2014-2015 : Hillary Rikli, Biology

2013-2014 : Justin Ramey, Biology

2012-2013 : Christopher Young, Environmental Studies

2011-2012 : Sarah Collins, English

2010-2011 : Stephanie Marie Ebersohl, English

2009-2010 : Vera Leopold, Environmental Studies

2008-2009 : Kelsi Megan Kerns, Communication

2007-2008 : Heather Wikens, History

2006-2007 : Denise Howard Long, English

2005-2006 : Joshua Alan Doetsch, English

2004-2005 : Patrick Pospisek, History

2003-2004 : Tracy DiMezzo, Biology

2002-2003 : Kristine Muschal, English

2001-2002 : Laura E. Johnson, History

2000-2001 : Madeline Gumble, History

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• Outstanding Thesis & Dissertation Awards

UNLV Graduate College Outstanding Thesis & Dissertation Awards

Each academic college may nominate one outstanding thesis and one outstanding dissertation.

The Graduate College Awards Committee will review and rate all nominations. The awards committee will assign each thesis and dissertation into one of two broad categories based upon the Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation award competition. Category 1 will include social sciences, humanities and fine arts. Category 2 will include biological sciences, mathematics, physical sciences, health sciences and engineering.

Eligible projects for this year's  Outstanding Thesis and Outstanding Dissertation awards  are those successfully defended between August 1, 2023, and August 1, 2024. Nominations are due to the Graduate College by December 1st, 2024.  Students: Please see their college/school for their internal application deadline .

The College Dean's office will submit their nomination via the online form . The Dean/Associate Dean of each respective College/School will provide signature and approve the one nominee on the form. The nominations package must include:

• A PDF of the final, formatted and approved document (thesis or dissertation)
• A letter of nomination from the student's faculty mentor or department chair

In each category there is a $2,000 prize for the author of the Outstanding Dissertation, and a $1,500 prize for the author of the Outstanding Thesis. Winners will be announced in Spring and recognized at the UNLV Academic Recognition Ceremony & at the Graduate College Awards Ceremony.

Past Award Winners

Outstanding Thesis - STEM Davis Cammann, Master of Science, Life Sciences,  The Genetic Relationship Between Peripheral Inflamation and Alzheimer's Disease

Outstanding Thesis - Non-STEM Mohammed Jahama, Master of Arts, English A Name No One Should Know

Outstanding Dissertation - STEM Dr Jacqueline Phan, Doctor of Philosophy, Chemistry and Biochemistry Poop! There It Is! Anti-germinants and Biological Variables as Modulators of Clostridioides Difficile Infection (CDI)

Outstanding Dissertation - Non-STEM Dr. Christopher Wakefiled, Doctor of Philosophy, Sociology The Invisible Stockade: Sex Offender Management, Governmentality, and the Search for Normal Life

Outstanding Thesis - STEM Evan O'Neal, Master of Science, Geoscience Source and Parental Melts of Poikilitic Shergottites: Implications for Martian Magmatism

Outstanding Thesis - Non-STEM Madison Wiese, Master of Arts, Communication Studies Communicating Pain Unseen: Addressing Health Outcomes in Sexual Activity for Women with Endometriosis

Outstanding Dissertation - STEM Suzanne Mulligan, Doctor of Philosophy, Geoscience The Application of Detrital Zircon Geochronology, Pressure-Temperature Modeling, Monazite Petrochronology, and Quartz-In-Garnet Elastic Geobarometry to the Tectonic Evolution of the Funeral Mountains and Related Metamorphic Core Complexes

Outstanding Dissertation - Non-STEM Edward Smith, Doctor of Philosophy, Clinical Psychology The Psychopathology Circumplex+: A Novel Conceptualization of Psychopathology and Associated Measure

Outstanding Thesis - STEM Cale Seymour, Master of Science, Biological Sciences Analysis of 316 Omnitrophota (OP3) Genomes Reveals a Diverse and Ubiquitous Candidate Phylum of Putative Syntrophs, Predators, and Free-Living Nanobacteria Encoding Giant Open-Reading Frames.

Outstanding Thesis - Non-STEM Maribel Estrada Calderon, Master of Arts, History The Frontier of the Labor Movement: Latinas and the Longest Strike in Twentieth-Century Las Vegas

Outstanding Dissertation - STEM Jeremy Smallwood, Doctor of Philosophy, Astronomy Accretion and Debris Disc Dynamics Around Single and Higher-Order Star Systems

Outstanding Dissertation - Non-STEM Yen-Ling Chen, Doctor of Philosophy, Psychology Cultural Mechanism of Mothers’ Perceptions of YouthPsychopathology

Outstanding Thesis - STEM Lara Turello, Master of Science, Biochemistry Investigating the Mechanisms Responsible for Cephalosporin Resistance in Clostridioides difficile Strain 630

Outstanding Thesis - Non-STEM Christopher Forepaugh, Master of Arts, Criminal Justice Implicit Attitudes, Explicit Attitudes, and Priming: A Preliminary Analysis of Factors Affecting Use of Force Decisions

Outstanding Dissertation - STEM Ali Saber Sichani, Doctor of Philosophy, Civil and Environmental Engineering Application of Data-Driven and Process-Based Modeling Approaches for Water Quality Simulation in Lakes and Freshwater Reservoirs

Outstanding Dissertation - Non-STEM Shae Cox, Doctor of Philosophy, History The Fabric of Civil War Society: The Effect of Uniforms, Badges, and Flags, 1861 to 1939

Outstanding Thesis - STEM Rachel Rahib, Master of Science, Geoscience Petrogenesis of Enriched and Intermediate Poikilitic Shergottites: From Magmatic Source to Emplacement

Outstanding Thesis - Non-STEM Frank Johnson, Master of Fine Arts, Poetry, Creative Writing Literal Dope

Outstanding Dissertation - STEM Joshua Sackett, Doctor of Philosophy, Life Sciences Prokaryotic Diversity and Aqueous Geochemistry of Subsurface Environments of the Death Valley Regional Flow System

Outstanding Dissertation - Non-STEM Sarah McCarthy, Doctor of Philosophy, Early Childhood, Multilingual, and Special Education Exploring Mathematics Anxiety of Students At-Risk for Mathematics Difficulties

Outstanding Thesis - STEM Jacqueline Phan, Master of Science, Biochemistry A Potential Solution to a Poopy Problem: Bile Salt Analogs as Prophylactics Against C lostridium Difficile Infection (CDI)

Outstanding Thesis - Non-STEM Olufunke Ogundimu, Master of Fine Arts, Fiction, Creative Writing Memories of Three Rivers

Outstanding Dissertation - STEM Leland Barker, Doctor of Philosophy, Kinesiology Biomechanical Analysis of Jumping: The Influence of External Load and Countermovement Depth on Deceleration Strategies and Performance

Outstanding Dissertation - Non-STEM Scot Ewen, Doctor of Philosophy, Science Education Exploring the Effectiveness of Model-Based Instruction to Improve Sixth-Grade Students’ Science Content Knowledge

Outstanding Thesis - STEM Jeremy Smallwood, Master of Science, Astronomy 2018 Secular Resonances during Main-Sequence and Post-Main-Sequence Planetary System Dynamics

Outstanding Thesis - Non-STEM Sara Black, Master of Arts, History Homeland Homestead, and Haven: The Changing Perspectives of Zion National Park, 1700-1930 2018

Outstanding Dissertation - STEM Tyler Stalbaum, Doctor of Philosophy, Mechanical Engineering Ionic Electroactive Polymer Devices: Physics-Based Modeling with Experimental Investigation and Verification

Outstanding Dissertation - Non-STEM Cheryl Anderson, Doctor of Philosophy, Anthropology The Bioarchaeology of Inequality during the Middle Bronze Age in Central Anatolia

Outstanding Thesis - STEM Michael Steiner, Master of Science in Geoscience Dissolution of Nontronite in Low Water Activity Brines in and Implications for the Aqueous History of Mars

Outstanding Thesis - Non-STEM Jesse Cook, Master of Arts in English The Only Thing That Matters': A Critique of the Editorial Practices in Garden of Eden

Outstanding Dissertation - STEM Janelle Droessler, Doctor of Philosophy in Radiochemistry Direct Dissolution and Electrochemical Investigation of Cerium and Uranium in Ionic Liquid

Outstanding Dissertation - Non-STEM Margaret Huettl, Doctor of Philosophy in History Nindandishinaabewimin: Ojibwe Peoplehood in the North American West, 1854-1954

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Student Contributions ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

Superior research and writing by doctoral candidates in computer science and engineering

• ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

About ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

Presented annually to the author(s) of the best doctoral dissertation(s) in computer science and engineering.  The Doctoral Dissertation Award is accompanied by a prize of $20,000, and the Honorable Mention Award is accompanied by a prize totaling $10,000. Winning dissertations will be published in the ACM Digital Library as part of the ACM Books Series.

Recent Doctoral Dissertation Award News

2023 acm doctoral dissertation award.

Nivedita Arora of Northwestern University is the recipient of the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation “ Sustainable Interactive Wireless Stickers: From Materials to Devices to Applications ,” which demonstrated wireless and batteryless sensor nodes using novel materials and radio backscatter.

Arora’s research envisions creating sustainable computational materials that operate by harvesting energy from the environment and, at the end of their life cycle, can be responsibly composted or recycled. Her research process involves working at the intersection of materials, methods of fabrication, low-power systems, and HCI . She actively looks to apply her work to application domains such as smart homes, health, climate change, and wildlife monitoring.

Arora’s dissertation makes truly groundbreaking contributions to the fields of Ubiquitous Computing and Human-Computer Interaction. Today’s Internet of Things (IoT) devices are bulky, require battery maintenance, and involve costly installation. In contrast, Arora shows how the computational capabilities of sensing, communication, and display can be diffused into materials and everyday objects. She builds interactive stickers that are inexpensive, and easy to deploy and sustainably operate by harvesting energy from body heat or indoor light. She demonstrates this idea over a series of projects. Her first effort,  SATURN , is a thin, flexible multi-layer material that is a self-sustaining audio sensor. Specifically, it uses the vibration itself to power the ability to capture and encode the vibration sensor. SATURN was extended to ZEUSSS  to use passive RF backscatter for wireless transmission on the vibration signal. She followed this up with the MARS platform that produces an extremely low-power (less than a microwatt) resonance circuit that varies its frequency based on user interaction with interfaces that create inductive or capacitive loads on the circuit. Coupling this circuit with FM passive backscatter and ambient power harvesting allows user interfaces such as touch-sensitive buttons, sliders, and vibration sensors to communicate at a distance. The result of these three projects is a flat user interface in a post-it note form factor that can be deployed in the environment simply by sticking it to a flat surface. The flat user interface and mobile design allows for applications such as light switches or audio volume sliders that can simply be pasted where they are needed without worrying about wiring the infrastructure or maintaining batteries.

The final project, VENUS , adds output in the form of low-power display technologies to provide immediate feedback on the surface of the computational material, opening a wide variety of user-facing interaction scenarios. Her work also showed that it is possible to power these circuits through the transfer of body heat when a user touches the button, which can also be used to protect privacy.

Arora is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering and (by courtesy) Computer Science Department, as well as the Allen K. and Johnnie Cordell Breed Jr. Professor of Design at Northwestern University. Her research involves rethinking the computing stack from a sustainability-first approach for its entire life-cycle: manufacturing, operation, and disposal. Arora received a PhD in Computer Science and an MS In Human-Computer Interaction from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Honorable Mentions

Honorable Mentions for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Gabriele Farina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and William Kuszmaul   of Harvard University.

Farina’s   dissertation, “ Game-Theoretic Decision Making in Imperfect-Information Games ” was recognized for laying modern learning foundations for decision-making in imperfect-information sequential games, resolving long-standing questions, and demonstrating state-of-the-art theoretical and practical performance.

Farina is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department (EECS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, optimization, and game theory. He received a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Kuszmaul’s dissertation, “ Randomized Data Structures: New Perspectives and Hidden Surprises ,” is recognized for contributions to the field of randomized data structures that overturn conventional wisdom and widely believed conjecture.

Kuszmaul’s research focuses on algorithms, data structures, and probability. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is presently doing Post Doctoral work at Harvard University. In August, he will be starting as an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

Nivedita Arora of Northwestern University is the recipient of the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation “ Sustainable Interactive Wireless Stickers: From Materials to Devices to Applications . Honorable Mentions for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Gabriele Farina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and William Kuszmaul   of Harvard University.

2023 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention

2022 acm doctoral dissertation award.

Aayush Jain is the recipient of the 2022 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award  for his dissertation “ Indistinguishability Obfuscation From Well-Studied Assumptions ,” which established the feasibility of mathematically rigorous software obfuscation from well-studied hardness conjectures.

The central goal of software obfuscation is to transform source code to make it unintelligible without altering what it computes. Additional conditions may be added, such as requiring the transformed code to perform similarly, or even indistinguishably, from the original. As a software security mechanism, it is essential that software obfuscation have a firm mathematical foundation.

The mathematical object that Jain’s thesis constructs, indistinguishability obfuscation, is considered a theoretical “master tool” in the context of cryptography—not only in helping achieve long-desired cryptographic goals such as functional encryption, but also in expanding the scope of the field of cryptography itself. For example, indistinguishability obfuscation aids in goals related to software security that were previously entirely in the domain of software engineering.

Jain’s dissertation was awarded the Best Paper Award at the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2021) and was the subject of an article in Quanta Magazine titled “Scientists Achieve Crown Jewel of Cryptography.”

Jain is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is interested in theoretical and applied cryptography and its connections with related areas of theoretical computer science. Jain received a BTech in Electrical Engineering, and an MTech in Information and Communication Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Honorable Mentions for the 2022 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Alane Suhr  whose PhD was earned at Cornell University, and Conrad Watt ,  who earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge.

Suhr’s   dissertation, “ Reasoning and Learning in Interactive Natural Language Systems ,” was recognized for formulating and designing algorithms for continual language learning in collaborative interactions, and designing methods to reason about context-dependent language meaning. Suhr’s dissertation made transformative contributions in several areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Suhr is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Suhr’s research is focused on natural language processing, machine learning, and computer vision. Suhr received a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from Ohio State University, as well as a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Watt’s dissertation, “ Mechanising and Evolving the Formal Semantics of WebAssembly: the Web’s New Low-Level Language ,” establishes a mechanized semantics for WebAssembly and defines its concurrency model. The model will underpin current and future web engineering. His dissertation is considered a stand-out example of developing and using fully rigorous mechanized semantics to directly affect and improve the designs of major pieces of our industrial computational infrastructure.

Watt is a Research Fellow (postdoctoral) at the University of Cambridge, where he focuses on mechanized formal verification, concurrency, and the WebAssembly language. He received a MEng in Computer Science from Imperial College London and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.

Aayush Jain is the recipient of the 2022 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation “ Indistinguishability Obfuscation From Well-Studied Assumptions .” Honorable Mentions for the 2022 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Alane Suhr whose PhD was earned at Cornell University, and Conrad Watt , who earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge.

Jain's dissertation established the feasibility of mathematically rigorous software obfuscation from well-studied hardness conjectures.The central goal of software obfuscation is to transform source code to make it unintelligible without altering what it computes. Additional conditions may be added, such as requiring the transformed code to perform similarly, or even indistinguishably, from the original. As a software security mechanism, it is essential that software obfuscation have a firm mathematical foundation.

2022 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention

Suhr’s dissertation, “ Reasoning and Learning in Interactive Natural Language Systems ,” was recognized for formulating and designing algorithms for continual language learning in collaborative interactions, and designing methods to reason about context-dependent language meaning. Suhr’s dissertation made transformative contributions in several areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Watt’s dissertation, “ Mechanising and Evolving the Formal Semantics of WebAssembly: The Web’s New Low-Level Language ,” establishes a mechanized semantics for WebAssembly and defines its concurrency model. The model will underpin current and future web engineering. His dissertation is considered a stand-out example of developing and using fully rigorous mechanized semantics to directly affect and improve the designs of major pieces of our industrial computational infrastructure.

2021 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

Manish Raghavan is the recipient of the 2021 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation " The Societal Impacts of Algorithmic Decision-Making ." Raghavan’s dissertation makes significant contributions to the understanding of algorithmic decision making and its societal implications, including foundational results on issues of algorithmic bias and fairness.

Algorithmic fairness is an area within AI that has generated a great deal of public and media interest. Despite being at a very early stage of his career, Raghavan has been one of the leading figures shaping the direction and focus of this line of research.

Raghavan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society. His primary interests lie in the application of computational techniques to domains of social concern, including algorithmic fairness and behavioral economics, with a particular focus on the use of algorithmic tools in the hiring pipeline. Raghavan received a BS degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Honorable Mentions for the 2021 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Dimitris Tsipras of Stanford University, Pratul Srinivasan of Google Research and Benjamin Mildenhall of Google Research.

Dimitris Tsipras’ dissertation, “ Learning Through the Lens of Robustness ,” was recognized for foundational contributions to the study of adversarially robust machine learning (ML) and building effective tools for training reliable machine learning models. Tsipras made several pathbreaking contributions to one of the biggest challenges in ML today: making ML truly ready for real-world deployment.

Tsipras is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University. His research is focused on understanding and improving the reliability of machine learning systems when faced with the real world. Tsipras received a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, as well as SM and PhD degrees in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Pratul Srinivasan and Benjamin Mildenhall are awarded Honorable Mentions for their co-invention of the Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) representation, associated algorithms and theory, and their successful application to the view synthesis problem. Srinivasan’s dissertation, " Scene Representations for View Synthesis with Deep Learning ," and Mildenhall’s dissertation, “ Neural Scene Representations for View Synthesis ,” addressed a long-standing open problem in computer vision and computer graphics. That problem, called “view synthesis” in vision and “unstructured light field rendering” in graphics, involves taking just a handful of photographs of a scene and predicting new images from any intermediate viewpoint. NeRF has already inspired a remarkable volume of follow-on research, and the associated publications have received some of the fastest rates of citation in computer graphics literature—hundreds in the first year of post-publication.

Srinivasan is a Research Scientist at Google Research, where he focuses on problems at the intersection of computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning. He received a BSE degree in Biomedical Engineering and BA in Computer Science from Duke University and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mildenhall is a Research Scientist at Google Research, where he works on problems in computer vision and graphics. He received a BS degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Stanford University and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

Chuchu Fan is the recipient of the 2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation, “ Formal Methods for Safe Autonomy: Data-Driven Verification, Synthesis, and Applications .” The dissertation makes foundational contributions to verification of embedded and cyber-physical systems, and demonstrates applicability of the developed verification technologies in industrial-scale systems.

Fan’s dissertation also advances the theory for sensitivity analysis and symbolic reachability; develops verification algorithms and software tools (DryVR, Realsyn); and demonstrates applications in industrial-scale autonomous systems.

Key contributions of her dissertation include the first data-driven algorithms for bounded verification of nonlinear hybrid systems using sensitivity analysis. A groundbreaking demonstration of this work on an industrial-scale problem showed that verification can scale. Her sensitivity analysis technique was patented, and a startup based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been formed to commercialize this approach.

Fan also developed the first verification algorithm for “black box” systems with incomplete models combining probably approximately correct (PAC) learning with simulation relations and fixed point analyses. DryVR, a tool that resulted from this work, has been applied to dozens of systems, including advanced driver assist systems, neural network-based controllers, distributed robotics, and medical devices.

Additionally, Fan’s algorithms for synthesizing controllers for nonlinear vehicle model systems have been demonstrated to be broadly applicable. The RealSyn approach presented in the dissertation outperforms existing tools and is paving the way for new real-time motion planning algorithms for autonomous vehicles.

Fan is the Wilson Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she leads the Reliable Autonomous Systems Lab. Her group uses rigorous mathematics including formal methods, machine learning, and control theory for the design, analysis, and verification of safe autonomous systems. Fan received a BA in Automation from Tsinghua University. She earned her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Honorable Mentions for the 2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Henry Corrigan-Gibbs and Ralf Jung .

Corrigan-Gibbs’s dissertation, “ Protecting Privacy by Splitting Trust ,” improved user privacy on the internet using techniques that combine theory and practice. Corrigan-Gibbs first develops a new type of probabilistically checkable proof (PCP), and then applies this technique to develop the Prio system, an elegant and scalable system that addresses a real industry need. Prio is being deployed at several large companies, including Mozilla, where it has been shipping in the nightly version of the Firefox browser since late 2019, the largest-ever deployment of PCPs.

Corrigan-Gibbs’s dissertation studies how to robustly compute aggregate statistics about a user population without learning anything else about the users. For example, his dissertation introduces a tool enabling Mozilla to measure how many Firefox users encountered a particular web tracker without learning which users encountered that tracker or why. The thesis develops a new system of probabilistically checkable proofs that lets every browser send a short zero-knowledge proof that its encrypted contribution to the aggregate statistics is well formed. The key innovation is that verifying the proof is extremely fast.

Corrigan-Gibbs is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is also a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. His research focuses on computer security, cryptography, and computer systems. Corrigan-Gibbs received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Ralf Jung’s dissertation, “ Understanding and Evolving the Rust Programming Language ,” established the first formal foundations for safe systems programming in the innovative programming language Rust. In development at Mozilla since 2010, and increasingly popular throughout the industry, Rust addresses a longstanding problem in language design: how to balance safety and control. Like C++, Rust gives programmers low-level control over system resources. Unlike C++, Rust also employs a strong “ownership-based” system to statically ensure safety, so that security vulnerabilities like memory access errors and data races cannot occur. Prior to Jung’s work, however, there had been no rigorous investigation of whether Rust’s safety claims actually hold, and due to the extensive use of “unsafe escape hatches” in Rust libraries, these claims were difficult to assess.

In his dissertation, Jung tackles this challenge by developing semantic foundations for Rust that account directly for the interplay between safe and unsafe code. Building upon these foundations, Jung provides a proof of safety for a significant subset of Rust. Moreover, the proof is formalized within the automated proof assistant Coq and therefore its correctness is guaranteed. In addition, Jung provides a platform for formally verifying powerful type-based optimizations, even in the presence of unsafe code.

Through Jung's leadership and active engagement with the Rust Unsafe Code Guidelines working group, his work has already had profound impact on the design of Rust and laid essential foundations for its future.

Jung is a post-doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems and a research affiliate of the Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests include programming languages, verification, semantics, and type systems. He conducted his doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, and received his PhD, Master's, and Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science from Saarland University.

Chuchu Fan is the recipient of the 2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation, “ Formal Methods for Safe Autonomy: Data-Driven Verification, Synthesis, and Applications .” Honorable Mentions go to Henry Corrigan-Gibbs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ralf Jung of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems and MIT.

Fan’s dissertation makes foundational contributions to verification of embedded and cyber-physical systems, and demonstrates applicability of the developed verification technologies in industrial-scale systems. Her dissertation also advances the theory for sensitivity analysis and symbolic reachability; develops verification algorithms and software tools (DryVR, Realsyn); and demonstrates applications in industrial-scale autonomous systems.

2020 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention

2019 acm doctoral dissertation award.

Dor Minzer of Tel Aviv University is the recipient of the 2019 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “ On Monotonicity Testing and the 2-to-2-Games Conjecture .” Honorable Mentions go to Jakub Tarnawski of École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and JiaJun Wu of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dor Minzer's dissertation, “ On Monotonicity Testing and the 2-to-2-Games Conjecture ,” settles the complexity of testing monotonicity of Boolean functions and makes a significant advance toward resolving the Unique Games Conjecture, one of the most central problems in approximation algorithms and complexity theory.

Property-testers are extremely efficient randomized algorithms that check whether an object satisfies a certain property, when the data is too large to examine. For example, one may want to check that the distance between any two computers in the internet network does not exceed a given bound. In the first part of his thesis, Minzer settled a famous open problem in the field by introducing an optimal tester that checks whether a given Boolean function (voting scheme) is monotonic.

The holy grail of complexity theory is to classify computational problems to those that are feasible and those that are infeasible. The PCP theorem (for probabilistically checkable proofs) establishes the framework that enables classifying approximation problems as infeasible, showing they are NP-hard. In 2002, Subhash Khot proposed the Unique Games Conjecture (UGC), asserting that a very strong version of the PCP theorem should still hold. The conjecture has inspired a flurry of research and has had far-reaching implications. If proven true, the conjecture would explain the complexity of a whole family of algorithmic problems. In contrast to other conjectures, UGC has been controversial, splitting the community into believers and skeptics. While progress toward validating the conjecture has stalled, evidence against it had been piling up, involving new algorithmic techniques.

In the second part of his dissertation, Minzer went halfway toward establishing the conjecture, and in the process nullified the strongest known evidence against UGC. Even if UGC is not resolved in the immediate future, Minzer’s dissertation makes significant advances toward solving research problems that have previously appeared out of reach.

Minzer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, and will be joining MIT as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2020. His main research interests are in computational complexity theory, PCP, and analysis of Boolean functions. Minzer received a BA in Mathematics, as well as an MSc and PhD in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University.

Dor Minzer of Tel Aviv University is the recipient of the 2019 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation, “ On Monotonicity Testing and the 2-to-2-Games Conjecture .” The key contributions of Minzer’s dissertation are settling the complexity of testing monotonicity of Boolean functions and making a significant advance toward resolving the Unique Games Conjecture, one of the most central problems in approximation algorithms and complexity theory.

Honorable Mentions for the 2019 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Jakub Tarnawski , École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and JiaJun Wu , Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Jakub Tarnawski’s dissertation “ New Graph Algorithms via Polyhedral Techniques ” made groundbreaking algorithmic progress on two of the most central problems in combinatorial optimization: the matching problem and the traveling salesman problem. Work on deterministic parallel algorithms for the matching problem is motivated by one of the unsolved mysteries in computer science: does randomness help in speeding up algorithms? Tarnawski’s dissertation makes significant progress on this question by almost completely derandomizing a three-decade-old randomized parallel matching algorithm by Ketan Mulmuley, Umesh Vaziriani, and Vijay Vazirani.

The second major result of Tarnawski’s dissertation relates to the traveling salesman problem: find the shortest tour of n given cities. Already in 1956, George Dantzig et al. used a linear program to solve a special instance of the problem. Since then the strength of their linear program has become one of the main open problems in combinatorial optimization. Tarnawski’s dissertation resolves this question asymptotically and gives the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for the asymmetric traveling salesman problem.

Tarnawski is a researcher at Microsoft Research. He is broadly interested in theoretical computer science and combinatorial optimization, particularly in graph algorithms and approximation algorithms. He received his PhD from EPFL and an MSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Wrocław, Poland.

JiaJun Wu’s dissertation, “ Learning to See the Physical World ,” has advanced AI for perceiving the physical world by integrating bottom-up recognition in neural networks with top-down simulation engines, graphical models, and probabilistic programs. Despite phenomenal progress in the past decade, current artificial intelligence methods tackle only specific problems, require large amounts of training data, and easily break when generalizing to new tasks or environments. Human intelligence reveals how far we need to go: from a single image, humans can explain what we see, reconstruct the scene in 3D, predict what’s going to happen, and plan our actions accordingly.

Wu addresses the problem of physical scene understanding—how to build efficient and versatile machines that learn to see, reason about, and interact with the physical world. The key insight is to exploit the causal structure of the world, using simulation engines for computer graphics, physics, and language, and to integrate them with deep learning. His dissertation spans perception, physics and reasoning, with the goal of seeing and reasoning about the physical world as humans do. The work bridges the various disciplines of artificial intelligence, addressing key problems in perception, dynamics modeling, and cognitive reasoning.

Wu is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. His research interests include physical scene understanding, dynamics models, and multi-modal perception. He received his PhD and SM degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Economics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

2019 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention

2018 acm doctoral dissertation award.

Chelsea Finn of the University of California, Berkeley is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation, “ Learning to Learn with Gradients .” In her thesis, Finn introduced algorithms for meta-learning that enable deep networks to solve new tasks from small datasets, and demonstrated how her algorithms can be applied in areas including computer vision, reinforcement learning and robotics.

Deep learning has transformed the artificial intelligence field and has led to significant advances in areas including speech recognition, computer vision and robotics. However, deep learning methods require large datasets, which aren’t readily available in areas such as medical imaging and robotics.

Meta-learning is a recent innovation that holds promise to allow machines to learn with smaller datasets. Meta-learning algorithms “learn to learn” by using past data to learn how to adapt quickly to new tasks. However, much of the initial work in meta-learning focused on designing increasingly complex neural network architectures. In her dissertation, Finn introduced a class of methods called model-agnostic meta-learning (MAML) methods, which don’t require computer scientists to manually design complex architectures. Finn’s MAML methods have had tremendous impact on the field and have been widely adopted in reinforcement learning, computer vision and other fields of machine learning.

At a young age, Finn has become one of the most recognized experts in the field of robotic learning. She has developed some of the most effective methods to teach robots skills to control and manipulate objects. In one instance highlighted in her dissertation, she used her MAML methods to teach a robot reaching and placing skills, using raw camera pixels from just a single human demonstration.

Finn is a Research Scientist at Google Brain and a postdoctoral researcher at the Berkeley AI Research Lab (BAIR). In the fall of 2019, she will start a full-time appointment as an Assistant Professor at Stanford University. Finn received her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Honorable Mentions for the 2018 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Ryan Beckett and Tengyu Ma , who both received PhD degrees in Computer Science from Princeton University.

Ryan Beckett developed new, general and efficient algorithms for creating and validating network control plane configurations in his dissertation, “ Network Control Plane Synthesis and Verification .” Computer networks connect key components of the world’s critical infrastructure. When such networks are misconfigured, several systems people rely on are interrupted—airplanes are grounded, banks go offline, etc. Beckett’s dissertation describes new principles, algorithms and tools for substantially improving the reliability of modern networks. In the first half of his thesis, Beckett shows that it is unnecessary to simulate the distributed algorithms that traditional routers implement—a process that is simply too costly—and that instead, one can directly verify the stable states to which such algorithms will eventually converge. In the second half of his thesis, he shows how to generate correct configurations from surprisingly compact high-level specifications.

Beckett is a researcher in the mobility and networking group at Microsoft Research. He received his PhD and MA in Computer Science from Princeton University, and both a BS in Computer Science and a BA in Mathematics from the University of Virginia.

Tengyu Ma’s dissertation, " Non-convex Optimization for Machine Learning: Design, Analysis, and Understanding ,” develops novel theory to support new trends in machine learning. He introduces significant advances in proving convergence of nonconvex optimization algorithms in machine learning, and outlines properties of machine learning models trained via such methods. In the first part of his thesis, Ma studies a range of problems, such as matrix completion, sparse coding, simplified neural networks, and learning linear dynamical systems, and formalizes clear and natural conditions under which one can design provable correct and efficient optimization algorithms. In the second part of his thesis, Ma shows how to understand and interpret the properties of embedding models for natural languages, which were learned using nonconvex optimization.

Ma is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Statistics at Stanford University. He received a PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University and a BS in Computer Science from Tsinghua University.

2018 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention

Chelsea Finn of the University of California, Berkeley is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for her dissertation, “ Learning to Learn with Gradients .” Honorable Mentions go to Ryan Beckett and Tengyu Ma , who both received PhD degrees in Computer Science from Princeton University.

Beckett developed new, general and efficient algorithms for creating and validating network control plane configurations in his dissertation, “ Network Control Plane Synthesis and Verification .” Computer networks connect key components of the world’s critical infrastructure. When such networks are misconfigured, several systems people rely on are interrupted—airplanes are grounded, banks go offline, etc. Beckett’s dissertation describes new principles, algorithms and tools for substantially improving the reliability of modern networks. In the first half of his thesis, Beckett shows that it is unnecessary to simulate the distributed algorithms that traditional routers implement—a process that is simply too costly—and that instead, one can directly verify the stable states to which such algorithms will eventually converge. In the second half of his thesis, he shows how to generate correct configurations from surprisingly compact high-level specifications.

Ma’s dissertation, " Non-convex Optimization for Machine Learning: Design, Analysis, and Understanding ,” develops novel theory to support new trends in machine learning. He introduces significant advances in proving convergence of nonconvex optimization algorithms in machine learning, and outlines properties of machine learning models trained via such methods. In the first part of his thesis, Ma studies a range of problems, such as matrix completion, sparse coding, simplified neural networks, and learning linear dynamical systems, and formalizes clear and natural conditions under which one can design provable correct and efficient optimization algorithms. In the second part of his thesis, Ma shows how to understand and interpret the properties of embedding models for natural languages, which were learned using nonconvex optimization.

2017 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

Aviad Rubinstein is the recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2017 Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation “ Hardness of Approximation Between P and NP .” In his thesis, Rubinstein established the intractability of the approximate Nash equilibrium problem and several other important problems between P and NP-completeness—an enduring problem in theoretical computer science.

For several decades, researchers in areas including economics and game theory have developed mathematical equilibria models to predict how people in a game or economic environment might act given certain conditions.

When applying computational approaches to equilibria models, important questions arise, including how long it would take a computer to calculate an equilibrium. In theoretical computer science, a problem that can be solved in theory (given finite resources, such as time) but for which, in practice, any solution takes too many resources (that is, too much time) to be useful is known as an intractable problem. In 2008, Daskalakis, Goldberg and Papadimitriou demonstrated the intractability of the Nash equilibrium, an often-examined scenario in game theory and economics where no player in the game would take a different action as long as every other player in the game remains the same. But a very large question remained in theoretical computer science as to whether an approximate Nash equilibrium (a variation of the Nash equilibrium that allows the possibility that a player may have a small incentive to do something different) is also intractable.

Rubinstein’s dissertation introduced brilliant new ideas and novel mathematical techniques to demonstrate that the approximate Nash equilibrium is also intractable. Beyond solving this important question, Rubinstein’s thesis also insightfully addressed other problems around P and NP completeness, the most important question in theoretical computer science. Rubinstein is a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University and will be starting an appointment as an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the fall of 2018. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, an MSc in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University (Israel) and a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Technion (Israel).

Honorable Mentions for the 2017 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award went to Mohsen Ghaffari , who received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MIT EECS) and Stefanie Mueller , who received her PhD from the Hasso Plattner Institute (Germany). 

In Ghaffari’s dissertation, “ Improved Distributed Algorithms for Fundamental Graph Problems ,” he presents novel distributed algorithms that significantly lower the costs of solving fundamental graph problems in networks, including structuring problems, connectivity problems, and scheduling problems. Ghaffari’s dissertation includes both breakthrough algorithmic contributions and interesting methodology. The first part of the dissertation presents a new maximal independent set (MIS) algorithm, which is a breakthrough because it achieves a better time bound than previous algorithms for this three-decades-old problem. The second part of the dissertation contains a collection of related results about vertex connectivity decompositions. Finally, in the third part of his dissertation, Ghaffari introduces a time-efficient algorithm for concurrent scheduling of multiple distributed algorithms. Ghaffari is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich. He received a PhD and SM in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a double major in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Sharif University (Iran).

Mueller’s dissertation, “ Interacting with Personal Fabrication Devices ,” demonstrates how to make personal fabrication machines interactive. Her approach involves two steps: speeding of batch processing and turn taking, and real-time interaction.  Her software systems faBrickator, WirePrint and Platener allow users to fabricate 10 times faster, a process she calls low-fidelity fabrication or low-fab. In her dissertation she also outlines how to add interactivity. Constructable, a tool she developed, allows workers to fabricate by sketching directly on the workpiece, causing a laser cutter to implement these sketches when the user stops drawing. Another of Mueller’s tools, LaserOrigami, extends this work to 3D.  Mueller is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at MIT EECS and MIT CSAIL. She received a PhD in Computer Science as well as an MSc in IT-Systems Engineering from the Hasso Plattner Institute (Germany). Earlier, she received a BSc in Computer Science and Media from the University of Applied Science Harz (Germany).

Honorable Mentions for the 2017 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award went to Mohsen Ghaffari , who received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MIT EECS) and Stefanie Mueller , who received her PhD from the Hasso Plattner Institute (Germany).

2017 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention

Aviad Rubinstein is the recipient of the  Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2017 Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation “ Hardness of Approximation Between P and NP .” Honorable Mentions for the award went to Mohsen Ghaffari , who received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MIT EECS) and Stefanie Mueller , who received her PhD from the Hasso Plattner Institute (Germany).

2017 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Award Honorable Mention

Aviad Rubinstein is the recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2017 Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation “ Hardness of Approximation Between P and NP .” Honorable Mentions for the award went to Mohsen Ghaffari , who received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MIT EECS) and Stefanie Mueller , who received her PhD from the Hasso Plattner Institute (Germany).

2016 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

Haitham Hassanieh is the recipient of the ACM 2016 Doctoral Dissertation Award . Hassanieh developed highly efficient algorithms for computing the Sparse Fourier Transform, and demonstrated their applicability in many domains including networks, graphics, medical imaging and biochemistry.  In his dissertation,  The Sparse Fourier Transform: Theory and Practice , he presented a new way to decrease the amount of computation needed to process data, thus increasing the efficiency of programs in several areas of computing.

In computer science, the Fourier transform is a fundamental tool for processing streams of data. It identifies frequency patterns in the data, a task that has a broad array of applications. For many years, the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was considered the most efficient algorithm in this area. With the growth of Big Data, however, the FFT cannot keep up with the massive increase in datasets. In his doctoral dissertation Hassanieh presents the theoretical foundation of the Sparse Fourier Transform (SFT), an algorithm that is more efficient than FFT for data with a limited number of frequencies. He then shows how this new algorithm can be used to build practical systems to solve key problems in six different applications including wireless networks, mobile systems, computer graphics, medical imaging, biochemistry and digital circuits. Hassanieh’s Sparse Fourier Transform can process data at a rate that is 10 to 100 times faster than was possible before, thus greatly increasing the power of networks and devices.

Hassanieh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A native of Lebanon, he earned a BE in Computer and Communications Engineering from the American University of Beirut. Hassanieh’s Sparse Fourier Transform algorithm was chosen by  MIT Technology Review as one of the top 10 breakthrough technologies of 2012. He has also been recognized with the Sprowls Award for Best Dissertation in Computer Science, and the SIGCOMM Best Paper Award.

Honorable Mention for the 2016 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award went to Peter Bailis of Stanford University and Veselin Raychev of ETH Zurich.

In Bailis’s dissertation, Coordination Avoidance in Distributed Databases , he addresses a perennial problem in a network of multiple computers working together to achieve a common goal: Is it possible to build systems that scale efficiently (process ever-increasing amounts of data) while ensuring that application data remains provably correct and consistent? These concerns are especially timely as Internet services such as Google and Facebook have led to a vast increase in the global distribution of data. In addressing this problem, Bailis introduces a new framework, invariant confluence, that mitigates the fundamental tradeoffs between coordination and consistency. His dissertation breaks new conceptual ground in the areas of transaction processing and distributed consistency—two areas thought to be fully understood. Bailis is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and his AB in Computer Science from Harvard College.

Raychev’s dissertation, Learning from Large Codebases , introduces new methods for creating programming tools based on probabilistic models of code that can solve tasks beyond the reach of current methods. As the size of publicly available codebases has grown dramatically in recent years, so has interest in developing programming tools that solve software tasks by learning from these codebases. Raychev’s dissertation takes a novel approach to addressing this challenge that combines advanced techniques in programming languages with machine learning practices. In the thesis, Raychev lays out four separate methods that detail how machine learning approaches can be applied to program analysis in order to produce useful programming tools. These include: code completion with statistical language models; predicting program properties from big code; learning program from noisy data; and learning statistical code completion systems. Raychev’s work is regarded as having the potential to open up several promising new avenues of research in the years to come. Raychev is currently a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of DeepCode, a company developing artificial intelligence-based programming tools. He received a PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zurich. A native of Bulgaria, he received MS and BS degrees from Sofia University.

2016 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Honorable Mention Award

Haitham Hassanieh is the recipient of the ACM 2016 Doctoral Dissertation Award .  Honorable Mention for the 2016 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award went to Peter Bailis of Stanford University and Veselin Raychev of ETH Zurich.

Haitham Hassanieh  is the recipient of the ACM 2016  Doctoral Dissertation Award . Hassanieh developed highly efficient algorithms for computing the Sparse Fourier Transform, and demonstrated their applicability in many domains including networks, graphics, medical imaging and biochemistry.  In his dissertation,  The Sparse Fourier Transform: Theory and Practice , he presented a new way to decrease the amount of computation needed to process data, thus increasing the efficiency of programs in several areas of computing.

Hassanieh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A native of Lebanon, he earned a BE in Computer and Communications Engineering from the American University of Beirut. Hassanieh’s Sparse Fourier Transform algorithm was chosen by  MIT Technology Review  as one of the top 10 breakthrough technologies of 2012. He has also been recognized with the Sprowls Award for Best Dissertation in Computer Science, and the SIGCOMM Best Paper Award.

Honorable Mention for the 2016 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award went to  Peter Bailis  of Stanford University and  Veselin Raychev  of ETH Zurich.

In Bailis’s dissertation,  Coordination Avoidance in Distributed Databases , he addresses a perennial problem in a network of multiple computers working together to achieve a common goal: Is it possible to build systems that scale efficiently (process ever-increasing amounts of data) while ensuring that application data remains provably correct and consistent? These concerns are especially timely as Internet services such as Google and Facebook have led to a vast increase in the global distribution of data. In addressing this problem, Bailis introduces a new framework, invariant confluence, that mitigates the fundamental tradeoffs between coordination and consistency. His dissertation breaks new conceptual ground in the areas of transaction processing and distributed consistency—two areas thought to be fully understood. Bailis is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and his AB in Computer Science from Harvard College.

Carnegie Mellon Graduate Earns ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

Julian Shun has won the 2015 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award presented by ACM for providing evidence that, with appropriate programming techniques, frameworks and algorithms, shared-memory programs can be simple, fast and scalable. In his dissertation Shared-Memory Parallelism Can Be Simple, Fast, and Scalable , he proposes new techniques for writing scalable parallel programs that run efficiently both in theory and in practice.

While parallelism is essential to achieving high performance in computing, writing efficient and scalable programs can be very difficult. Shun’s three-pronged approach to writing parallel programs that he outlines in his thesis includes:

• proposing tools and techniques for deterministic parallel programming;
• the introduction of Ligra, the first high-level shared-memory framework for parallel graph traversal algorithms; and
• presenting new algorithms for a variety of important problems on graphs and strings that are both efficient in theory and practice.

Shun is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was awarded a Miller Research Fellowship. He earned his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, which nominated him for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award. He earned a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was ranked first in the 2008 graduating class of computer science students. During the 2013-2014 academic year, he was the recipient of a Facebook Graduate Fellowship.

He will receive the Doctoral Dissertation Award and its $20,000 prize at the annual ACM Awards Banquet on June 11 in San Francisco. Financial sponsorship of the award is provided by Google Inc.

Honorable Mention

Honorable mention for the 2015 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award went to Aaron Sidford of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Siavash Mirarab of the University of Texas at Austin. They will share a $10,000 prize, with financial sponsorship provided by Google Inc.

In Sidford’s dissertation, Iterative Methods, Combinatorial Optimization, and Linear Programming Beyond the Universal Barrier , he considers the fundamental problems in continuous and combinatorial optimization that occur pervasively in practice, and shows how to improve upon the best-known theoretical running times for solving these problems across a broad range of parameters. Sidford uses and improves techniques from diverse disciplines including spectral graph theory, numerical analysis, data structures, and convex optimization to provide the first theoretical improvements in decades for multiple classic problems ranging from linear programming to linear system solving to maximum flow. Sidford is presently a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft New England. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which nominated him for this award.

Mirarab’s dissertation, Novel Scalable Approaches for Multiple Sequence Alignment and Phylogenomic Reconstruction , addresses the growing need to analyze large-scale biological sequence data efficiently and accurately. To address this challenge, Mirarab introduces several methods: PASTA, a scalable and accurate algorithm that can align data sets up to one million sequences; statistical binning, a novel technique for reducing noise in estimation of evolutionary trees for individual parts of the genome; and ASTRAL, a new summary method that can run on 1,000 species in one day and has outstanding accuracy. These methods were essential in analyzing very large genomic datasets of birds and plants. Mirarab is currently an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, which nominated him for this award.

Creator Of Advanced Data Processing Architecture Wins 2014 Doctoral Dissertation Award

Matei Zaharia  won the 2014 Doctoral Dissertation Award for his innovative solution to tackling the surge in data processing workloads, and accommodating the speed and sophistication of complex multi-stage applications and more interactive ad-hoc queries. His work proposed a new architecture for cluster computing systems, achieving best-in-class performance in a variety of workloads while providing a simple programming model that lets users easily and efficiently combine them.

To address the limited processing capabilities of single machines in an age of growing data volumes and stalling process speeds, Zaharia developed Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDDs). As described in his dissertation “An Architecture for Fast and General Data Processing on Large Clusters,” RDDs are a distributed memory abstraction that lets programmers perform computations on large clusters in a faulttolerant manner. He implements RDDs in the open source Apache Spark system, which matches or exceeds the performance of specialized systems in many application domains, achieving up to speeds 100 times faster for certain applications. It also offers stronger fault tolerance guarantees and allows these workloads to be combined.

Zaharia, an assistant professor at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), completed his dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, which nominated him. A graduate of the University of Waterloo, where he won a gold medal at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) in 2005, he earned a Bachelor of Mathematics (B. Math) degree. He is a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Databricks, the company that is commercializing Apache Spark.

He will receive the Doctoral Dissertation Award and its $20,000 prize at the annual ACM Awards Banquet on June 20 in San Francisco, CA. Financial sponsorship of the award is provided by Google Inc.

Honorable Mention for the 2014 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award went to  John Criswell  of the University of Rochester, and  John C. Duchi  of Stanford University. They will share a $10,000 prize, with financial sponsorship provided by Google Inc.

Criswell’s dissertation, “Secure Virtual Architecture: Security for Commodity Software Systems,” describes a compiler-based infrastructure designed to address the challenges of securing systems that use commodity operating systems like UNIX or Linux. This Secure Virtual Architecture (SVA) can protect both operating system and application code through compiler instrumentation techniques. He completed a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which nominated him for this award.

Duchi’s dissertation, “Multiple Optimality Guarantees in Statistical Learning,” explores tradeoffs that occur in modern statistical and machine learning applications. The criteria for these tradeoffs – computation, communication, privacy – must be optimized to maintain statistical performance. He explores examples from optimization, and shows some of the practical benefits that a focus on multiple optimality criteria can bring about. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with an M.A. degree in Statistics and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, he was also an undergraduate and masters student at Stanford University. He was nominated by UC Berkeley for this award.

ACM will present these and other awards at the ACM Awards Banquet on June 20, 2015 in San Francisco, CA.

Press Release

Doctoral Dissertation Award Recognizes Young Researchers

Nivedita Arora  is the recipient of the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for demonstrating wireless and batteryless sensor nodes using novel materials and radio backscatter in her dissertation “Sustainable Interactive Wireless Stickers: From Materials to Devices to Applications.” Honorable Mentions for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award go to Gabriele Farina , whose PhD was earned at Carnegie Mellon University, for his dissertation “Game-Theoretic Decision Making in Imperfect-Information Games”; and William Kuszmaul , whose PhD was earned at MIT, for his dissertation “Randomized Data Structures: New Perspectives and Hidden Surprises.”

Full List of ACM Awards

Acm awards by category, career-long contributions, early-to-mid-career contributions, specific types of contributions, student contributions, regional awards, how awards are proposed.

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Outstanding Thesis Award Winners

Congratulations to the 2019 Outstanding Thesis Award winners!

May your achievement inspire all upcoming thesis authors!

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

Anna von Haumeder , Advanced Studies in Education and Counseling - Thesis: Resilience Among Syrian Refugees in Germany: The Relationships Between Demographic, Trauma Coping Self-Efficacy, and Environmental and Cultural Factors in Association with PTSD and Resilience in a Community-Based Sample

COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Alaina Coffey , Family and Consumer Sciences- Thesis: Implementation of a Nutrition Education Curriculum to Optimize Carbohydrate and Energy Intake Among Male and Female Adolescent Distance Runners

Angelica Prince , Social Work- Thesis: Supporting Transgender Students Curriculum for Middle School and High School Personnel

Maria Tobar , School of Criminolgy, Criminal Justice, and Emergency Management- Project: Central California Health Care Coalition Subcommittee Development Project: A Disaster Preparedness Partnership Between Fresno, Kings, Madera And Tulare Counties

Darielle Watkins , Kinesiology- Thesis: Examining the Relationship Between Self-Efficacy and Quality of Life in Ocean Lifeguards

COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

Nicole Buehlmaier , History- Thesis: Vanguards and Violence: “Representations of Female Armed Resistance and the Search for Radical Legitimacy, 1968-1975”

Zara Raheem , English- Thesis: The Intersection

COLLEGE OF NATURAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS

Siobanth Cruz , Biochemistry- Thesis: Oxidative Stress and Apolipoprotein E in Brain Endothelial Cells

Kirsten E. Faulkner , Geology- Thesis: A Recharge Analysis of the Indian Wells Basin, California Using Geochemical Analysis of Tritium and Radiocarbon

Raphael Reynolds Monroy , Physics- Thesis: Non-Radial Oscillation Modes of Superfluid Neutron Stars

Kelly Allison Porter , Science Education- Thesis: Developing Ecological Identities in High School Students Through a Place-Based Science Elective

Hannah Patricia Walker , Biology- Thesis: Ecological causes of intraspecific variation in the aposematic patterning of the striped skunk Mephitis mephitis

COLLEGE OF THE ARTS

Crystal Ferrer , Art- Thesis: Deaccessioning: Analyzing the Limits of Ethical and Legal Guidelines

2018 Outstanding Thesis Award Winners

Macey W. Lachman , Educational Leadership- Thesis: A Problematic Yet Necessary Effort: White Women in Student Affairs and Anti-Racist Allyship

Camille Bulaclac , Social Work- Project: An Adolescent Dating Abuse Prevention Program: A Grant Proposal

Allison M. Quigley , School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Emergency Management- Thesis: Establishing Police Legitimacy: The Influence of Procedural Justice in a Local Jurisdiction

Mark Riddlebarger , School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Emergency Management- Project: A Flexible, Scalable Incident Action Planning Tool for Orange Coast District—CA State Parks

Makenzie M. Stade , Kinesiology- Thesis: The Physiological Effects of Wearing a Compression Garment During Resistance Exercise

Saleem Mohammed Alfaife , Linguistics- Thesis: A Grammar of Faifi

Rebecca L. Jacobs , Geography- Thesis: Determinants of Fire Intensity in a Mesic West Africa Savanna: A Statistical Analysis of Fire Characteristics

Brendan K. Chan , Physics- Thesis: Hyperboloid-Parameterized Description of Diffusive Superconducting-Magnetic Hybrid Systems

Skylar Chuang , Biochemistry- Thesis: Apolipoprotein E3 Mediated Targeted Brain Delivery of Reconstituted High Density Lipoprotein Bearing 3, 10, and 17 nm Hydrophobic Core Gold Nanoparticles

Leslie G. Hellman , Science Education- Thesis: Lab Aliens, Legendary Fossils, and Deadly Science Potions: Views of Science and Scientists From Fifth Graders in a Free-Choice Creative Writing Program

Ryan M. Weller , Geology- Thesis: Compositional and Diagenetic Controls of Hardness in Siliceous Mudstones of the Monterey Formation, Belridge Oil Field, CA: Implications for Fracture Development

Ashley Wong , Biology- Thesis: Complement C1q and Macrophage Programmed Responses in Atherosclerosis

Marielos C. Kluck , School of Art- Thesis: You Are What You Read: Participation and Emancipation Problematized in Habacuc's Exposición #1

2017 Outstanding Thesis Award Winners

Melissa Mahoney , Educational Leadership- Thesis: Moving Toward an Anti-Deficit Perspective: African American Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) Students at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs)

Dewi Ariani , Health Care Administration- Project: Amerindo International Nurse Recruitment Agency

Noelle Bringmann , Family and Consumer Sciences- Project: Transportation Program for Members of the Long Beach Village

Jennifer Campbell , Health Science- Thesis: Evaluation of the Pathway Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Type 2 Diabetes in Adulthood

Donna De Loera , Social Work- Thesis: Experiences of Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors: A Qualitative Study of Their Written Journals

Brittany Goodwin , Speech-Language Pathology- Thesis: Parent’s Experiences Accessing Speech-Language Services Across Socioeconomic Levels Within Private Practice Settings

Michael Haswell , Kinesiology- Project: East Los Angeles Soccer Club: Elite Playing Opportunities for Underserved Student-Athletes with a Focus on Academic and Leadership Growth

Jesus Limon , Social Work- Project: Impact of Parental Incarceration on Family Reunification: California Welfare and Institution Code 361.5: A Policy Analysis

Stephan Moore , Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Emergency Management- Project: Fundamentals of Emergency Management for Law Enforcement: A California P.O.S.T. Course for Rural Officers

Sarah Ottone , Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Emergency Management- Thesis: A Qualitative Examination of Pretrial Decision-Making in Two California Counties

John Sassone , Family and Consumer Sciences- Thesis: Prevalence and Predictors of High Risk Supplement Use Among Collegiate Athletes  

Chelsea Soued and Michelle Wynne , Physical Therapy- Project: Functional Dorsiflexion Range of Motion Measurements in Individuals after CVA: A Pilot Study

Christina Tolentino-Baldridge , Nursing- Thesis: HIV Stigma: Beliefs and Attitudes of Nursing Students

Heather C. Barone , Communication Studies- Thesis: Bad Boss, What Are You Going to Do? An Investigation of Supervisor Misbehaviors

Marissa A. Jenrich , History- Thesis: “To Treat Her as a Woman”: African American Woman and Respectability in New York, 1860-1890

Manuel Romero , Romance, German, Russian Languages and Literatures- Thesis: Chronicling the Encounter: Wilderness and “Civilized” Spaces in Filippo Salvatore Gilij’s Essay on American History

Gilbert Arias , Physics- Thesis: Fabrication of Josephson Junctions by Nanosphere Lithography

Cristal J. Burkhart , Science Education- Thesis: How High School Students Define and Classify Marine Animals

Rachel Ellena , Chemistry- Antimicrobia and Lipid Binding Properties of the C-Terminal Domain of Apolipoprotein A-I Determined Using a Novel Apolipophorin III/Apolipoprtein A-I (179-243) Chimera

Andrew C. Farris , Geology- Thesis: Quantifying Late Quaternary Deformation in the Santa Ynez Valley, Santa Barbara County, California

David Michael Lizárraga , Biology- Thesis:  Effects of Large Inedible Particles on the Feeding Performance of Echinoderm Larvae

Jared Roger Sutton , Mathematics- Thesis: An Explicit Construction of the Character Table for Aut(S6) Representations of Aut(S6)

Sinead Finnerty , Art History- Thesis: Outward and Boundless: Painting in the Age of Expansion

Full text versions of these manuscripts can be accessed through ProQuest PQDT Open Access database.

The Thesis and Dissertation Office is not involved in determining the winners of the Outstanding Thesis Award. If you are interested in the process of nominating a manuscript for the award, contact the graduate advisor of your department or your thesis committee chair.

•   Automated Student Access Program (ASAP)
•   Graduate Catalog

The Graduate School is committed to advancing academic excellence in graduate and postdoctoral education and training. We have several departments that can assist you with questions regarding professional development activities, administrative processes, and graduate student success initiatives.  

Office Hours: 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., Monday through Friday  

Campus Location: GSR 2.116

Phone:210-458-4331  

Questions regarding admissions, transcripts and recruiting .

Promoting Excellence at UTSA: Awards for Outstanding Students, Faculty, and Staff

In an ongoing effort to promote excellence within our graduate community, The Graduate School is proud to announce a series of awards for UTSA students, faculty and staff. Please visit the links in each category below to learn more about nomination criteria, deadlines, and more. 

The Graduate School is pleased to announce a new series of  Graduate Student Awards . Up to 24 awards across three categories (Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award, Outstanding Thesis Award and Outstanding Non-Thesis/Capstone/Project Award, and Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award) will be made annually. Each award includes a $2,000 honorarium and a citation presented during Graduate Student Appreciation Week. For full information, please click here .

Faculty and Staff

The Graduate School is pleased to announce a new series of Graduate Faculty and Staff Awards . Each award includes a $2,000 honorarium and a citation presented during Graduate Student Appreciation Week. Categories include Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award, Outstanding Graduate Advisor of Record Award, and Outstanding Graduate Program Coordinator Award. For full information, please  click here .

To view the full list of past recipients, click here .

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Distinguished Thesis Award

These awards recognize outstanding and exceptional scholarship and research at the master’s level. Nominations are due by 5 p.m. PST, May 2, 2024. Each recipient will receive an honorarium of $1,000 and will be publicly recognized by the Graduate School.  

Call for Nominations  

The Graduate School is pleased to announce the 2024 Distinguished Thesis Awards competition in the following categories:  

• Biological Sciences  
• Humanities and Fine Arts 
• Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Engineering 
• Social Sciences 

These awards recognize outstanding and exceptional scholarship and research at the master’s level. Nominations are due by 5 p.m. PST, May 2, 2024 . Each department can submit only one nomination per category.  

The effective date of degree award must fall within the period of July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024, inclusive, for the nominee selected. 

Eligibility  

These awards recognize distinguished scholarly achievement at the master’s level. Nominations will be accepted in any discipline offering a master’s degree.  

The scholarly product eligible for this competition is a formal written thesis in English. If a nominating department offers both a thesis option and a project option, only the thesis is acceptable for consideration for this award.  

Formatting      

For all documents, fonts are to be no smaller than 11-point and margins no narrower than one inch.  We will strictly observe page-length limits and formatting guidelines.    

Nomination packet materials  

Step 1   

Please provide information about the nominee, the nominating department, etc. via this Microsoft Form .  

Step 2   

• The following materials must be submitted electronically and combined into a single PDF ( hard copy submissions will not be accepted ), in this order:   
• A non-technical summar y (NTS) addressing the purpose, methods, results of the research and its significance within the discipline of this thesis. An NTS is a concise document that provides a description of the process and its findings in a manner that is both appealing to read and easily understood by the general public. The NTS must not exceed 1,000-1,500 words. Please include the nominee’s name and doctoral program on this page. 
• An abstract of the nominee’s research (not to exceed 10 double-spaced pages). Appendices containing non-textual materials, such as charts or tables, may be included as additional pages.  All pages should be numbered, and each should bear the name of the nominee.    
• Two nomination letters: A letter from the department head or major professor and one additional faculty member. The letters should include information about the significance of the thesis, the contribution of the thesis to the program of the degree-granting unit, and the impact of the thesis on the knowledge base of the discipline.  
• A CV or resume from the student nominee (not to exceed five pages.) 

Note:  Departments should be prepared to provide an electronic copy of the complete thesis. 

Step 3   

The department chair, graduate program advisor, or the graduate program coordinator should submit the complete nomination file to [email protected] by the deadline of 5 p.m. PST, May 2, 2024. This is a firm deadline; in fairness to all nominators, no exceptions or extensions will be granted. 

Please save your file in this format:  

LASTNAMENOMINEE – Nominating Department – Thesis – [Category] – 2024.pdf    

Ex:  SONG – Astrobiology – Thesis – [Biological Sciences] – 2024.pdf     

Criteria for selection  

A Graduate School awards committee will select the award recipient based on four criteria:          

• Originality of the study.  
• Scope and significance of the study.  
• Contribution to the discipline and/or profession.     
• Overall quality of the summary and abstract of the thesis. 

Awards  

Each recipient will receive an honorarium of $1,000 and will be publicly recognized by the Graduate School.  

WAGS/ProQuest Distinguished Thesis Award  

If applicable, the Graduate School will submit a) one STEM discipline thesis; and b) one non-STEM discipline thesis (in the humanities, social sciences, education and/or business disciplines) to the Western Association of Graduate Schools for consideration for the WAGS/ProQuest Distinguished Thesis Awards . Note: If selected as an awardee in any of the above award categories, awardees must upload their theses or dissertations to the PQDT Global database to be eligible for selection. All nominating institutions must agree to this stipulation at the time the nomination is submitted. Those failing to agree to this requirement will be deemed ineligible for review.  

Address nomination materials to:   Joy Williamson-Lott   Dean of The Graduate School  

Questions?   

Jerry Pangilinan, [email protected]   Executive Assistant to the Dean of The Graduate School 

Graduate Student Awards

Here you can find awards that are available to our graduate students. You can view previous awardees on our   history page .

• The relationship between graduate education and the public good is currently receiving increased attention and promotion by several national organizations including the Council of Graduate Schools.
• This award is designed to encourage and recognize graduate student service projects at ETSU that enhance the public good, broadly defined as service to the community or university.

Award Details

• One award is given out each year.
• The award consists of a plaque and a monetary honorarium of $500.00.

Eligibility

• Service must have "promoted the public good" not for personal or financial gain.
• Common examples include defense, law enforcement, environmental goods, health promotion, counseling, support services, public education, global needs, humanitarian aid, public history projects, and information management.
• Service should be   directly   related to the graduate student's educational experience at ETSU.
• No paid services may be considered.
• Service effort must have occurred during the student's graduate tenure at ETSU.
• Students may receive this award only once.

Nominations

• The student is nominated by an ETSU faculty member, and all nomination materials are submitted using the online nomination form.
• Although individual departments may wish to develop their own nomination procedures, all nominations for the award must be routed through and approved by the Department Chair.

Application Packet

• A letter of nomination from the Graduate Coordinator that includes a description of the service project, and it must be cosigned by the Department Chair.
• Note:  The letter may include any additional service activities (ex. ETSU sponsored projects) that are not directly related to the nominee's program of study.
• A service philosophy statement written by the student.
• A letter from the nominee describing the service including the time and/or level of commitment required to complete nomination project(s).
• Two letters of endorsement that address the significance of the impact of service(s) performed.
• One from the supervisor of the services performed.
• One from anyone in the community who has had an opportunity to observe the performance of the service.

Application Deadline

• The application deadline is February 15th   each year. (Extended to March 1 for 2024)
• Decisions should be reached by the first week of April.
• A committee of one Graduate School dean, two Graduate Council members, and two regular full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members with graduate status will evaluate the applications.
• Recipients will be notified through a letter from the ETSU Graduate School. Notification will occur by the beginning of April. Copies of the letter will be sent to their advisory committee chair and their departmental chair. An award ceremony will be held later in April to recognize award recipients.
• To recognize outstanding graduate students for their achievements
• To increase the profile of graduate education at ETSU
• To help promote excellence in graduate research

Up to five awards will be given out each year, one for each of the following:

• Outstanding Capstone
• Outstanding Dissertation
• Outstanding Thesis in Art and Humanities
• Outstanding Thesis in Science, Math, Technology, and Computer Science
• Outstanding Thesis in Social Science and Education

Individual plaques as well as a monetary award of $500.00 (as funds allow) for each award recipient will be presented at an annual awards ceremony in April sponsored by the ETSU Graduate School. One large plaque for each type of award will be on display in the ETSU Graduate School lobby.

Eligibility Requirements

• Students must be nominated in writing by an ETSU graduate faculty member.
• Thesis or dissertations must be approved by the students advisory committee, have been successfully defended, and received final approval from the Graduate School.
• Capstone/culminating project write-ups (non-thesis) must have received final approval from the applicant's adviser or department, and a copy must be submitted with the nomination.
• Nominees must be in good academic standing (have a minimum GPA of 3.0) with expected graduation in the current academic year or have graduated within the previous 12 months.
• Students nominated in a previous year are not eligible for re-nomination.

Nomination Procedures

Applications will be submitted to the ETSU Graduate School.

• The student is nominated by an ETSU faculty member, and all nomination materials are submitted using the appropriate online nomination form from above.
• Attach a copy of the student's curriculum vitae (3 pages max). ( Note:   Theses and dissertations have a CV included, although this is usually very brief. The CV supplied with the nomination can be up to 3 pages in length.)
• Nominations are due by February 15th   each year.(Extended to March 1 for 2024)

Evaluation of Nominees

• Nominations will be reviewed by committee (1 per award category or sub-category). Each committee will be made up of ETSU graduate faculty members with expertise in the general categories, and they will be chaired by a member of the ETSU graduate council.
• The dean or assistant dean of the ETSU Graduate School who is responsible for the approval of ETD's will also attend each meeting. Each committee has the right to decline choosing an award recipient for any given year depending upon the quality of the nomination pool.
• Recipients will be notified through a letter from the ETSU Graduate School. Notification will occur by the beginning of April. Copies of the letter will be sent to their advisory committee chair and the

Deadline: 15 February annually

(Extended to March 1 for 2024)

The funding period is for July of the current year to June of the next year and only expenses incurred during that time period will be funded .

The Graduate school is accepting proposals for grant funding in the following categories:

Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Digital Media

•  Capstone Projects

Thesis or Dissertation Research

• To increase sources of financial support for scholarly or creative activities for graduate students in the arts, humanities, social sciences and digital media; enrolled in programs with capstone projects; or conducting thesis or dissertation research.
• To increase the profile of graduate education at ETSU.
• To help promote excellence in graduate education.
• Graduate students conducting scholarly or creative projects as part of their culminating program requirement (i.e., thesis, capstone, or exhibition) are eligible to apply.
• All applicants, must have completed at least one semester of graduate enrollment, will still be a graduate student at ETSU for at least one of the Summer 2024, Fall 2024 or Spring 2025 semesters, and be in good standing (have a minimum graduate GPA of 3.0) at the time the award is made (1 April).
• The grant period will be 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025. Only proposals that include this period will be considered.
• Individuals, or groups of graduate students working on the same scholarly activity/project may apply as a group
• For individuals, the applicant shall be the Main Contact, MC.
• For groups, one member of the group shall be designated as the MC. Communication about the proposal will be made to the MC.
• The other members of the group shall be designated group members.
• A graduate faculty member must have been selected as the scholarly activity/project advisor.
• Only one grant may be received for a given scholarly activity/project.

Capstone Projects

• Individuals, or groups of graduate students working on the same project may apply as a group.
• For individuals, the applicant shall be the principal investigator, PI.
• For groups, one member of the group shall be designated as the PI. Communication about the proposal will be made to the PI.
• The other members of the group shall be designated co-principal investigators, co-PI's.
• A graduate faculty member must have been selected as the project advisor.
• Only one grant may be received for a given capstone project.
• The graduate student shall be the principal investigator, PI.
• The PI must be conducting thesis or dissertation research as part of their graduate program. 
• The PI must have chosen a graduate committee chair and/or their program advisory committee.
• Preference for larger awards will be given to students working on projects and/or with mentors with no other source of funding.
• Master's students may only receive a grant once.
• Doctoral students may receive a maximum of two grants.

The proposal is to be included with this application form as a single PDF document (see below). It is to consist of:

• A maximum of three (3) single-spaced pages of narrative and one (1) budget page.
• Margins must be a minimum of one inch (1") or 2.54 cm, and the font must be 12 pt. or larger.
• Proposals not meeting these requirements will not be considered for funding
• Briefly describe your scholarly activity/project in non-technical language. Include in this description:
• Background information on the topic,
• Specific goals,
• A summary of preliminary results (Capstone and Thesis/Dissertation only), or work (if available), and
• A timetable for completion of the scholarly activity/project.
• The narrative must not exceed three (3) single-space pages including all figures, but not including references.
• References should be included on a separate page, be in a standard format for your discipline, and provide the names of all authors and the full title.

On one (1) page:

• Provide a list of specific expenditures and a justification for each.
• Also include a budget rationale (describe why this grant is necessary and how it will be used to further your scholarly activity/project).
• Give the actual cost for each item, that is, do not "round up" or estimate prices.
• Awards will be for a minimum of $500.00 and a maximum of $1,000.00.
• Requests outside of this range will not be considered.
• If the budget total exceeds $1,000.00, a specific requested amount must be given, and the justification must include a description of the source of the additional funds.

Application Procedures

Applications are to be submitted to the ETSU Graduate School using the online application form . Instructions are also available on this form .

• Applications are due February 15th
• The application will consist of the completed online application form and a proposal (see above). 
• Each proposal must have a graduate faculty member who has agreed to be the advisor. For Capstone Projects, the advisor must be the project advisor. For Thesis or Dissertation Research, the advisor must be the student’s Thesis or Dissertation Committee Chair. The advisor/committee chair must complete the online committee chair’s agreement form for the application to be considered for funding. This form will be sent directly to the advisor/chair after the the application form and proposal are submitted

Evaluation of Applications

Proposals will be reviewed in early March by a committee chaired by a member of the ETSU Graduate Council and composed of ETSU graduate faculty members. 

Number of Grants

Up to four (4) grants will be awarded in each of the Arts, Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Digital Media; and Capstone Projects, and up to eight (8) in Thesis or Dissertation Research (funding permitting).

Award Presentation & Posting

• The main contact/principal investigator and the advisor will be notified by the graduate school via email after a decision is made (early April). 
• Grant recipients will be invited to attend the Graduate School’s Awards Ceremony, held in mid-April, to receive a certificate marking the receipt of the grant.

Grant Expenditure Process

• Grant accounts will be set up under the advisor’s/committee chair’s name. All purchases must be made using e-Bucs.
• Grant recipients must include acknowledgment of support from the ETSU Graduate School Small Grants in Support programs in any publications that result from the scholar activity, project or research. For Thesis or Dissertation Research grant recipients, this includes their thesis or dissertation.

To encourage and recognize excellence in teaching by graduate teaching assistants and graduate teaching associates.

• Two awards may be given out each year: one at the teaching assistant level and another at the teaching associate level.
• The awards consist of a plaque and a monetary honorarium of $500.00 a piece.
• Students must be currently enrolled graduate teaching assistants or teaching associates   or   have taught once during the past three semesters to be eligible.
• Moreover, graduate teaching associates must have been listed as the instructor of record.
• Students may only receive each award once during their academic tenure at ETSU.
• The student is nominated by an ETSU faculty member, and all nomination materials are submitted using the online nomination form .
• Although individual departments may wish to develop their own nomination procedures, all nominations for the award must be routed through and approved by the departmental chair.
• Each department may nominate only one teaching assistant and one teaching associate.
• A letter of nomination from the Graduate Coordinator that includes a description of teaching responsibilities is required, and it must be cosigned by the Department Chair.
• Table Listing all classes taught at ETSU including dates
• All nominees are required to submit a teaching portfolio that includes the following information:
• A teaching statement written by the student.
• Evaluative feedback (i.e., SAI summaries, faculty and student evaluations, etc.)
• Up to 5 additional letters of support (ex. undergraduate students, fellow graduate students, faculty supervisors, staff members, etc.)
• Sample Exams
• D2L site access
• Graduate Teaching Assistants may also include samples of exams and/or quizzes that hey have written, if that is part of the job requirement.
• The nominee's curriculum vitae (CV).
• The application packet must be sent to Dr. Scott Kirkby, Assistant Dean ETSU Graduate School by email at [email protected]  
• Decisions should be reached by the first week of April
• A committee of one Graduate dean, two Graduate Council members, and two regular, full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members with graduate status will evaluate the applications

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College of Graduate Studies

Outstanding Thesis Award

An Outstanding Thesis Award will be available to one student whose thesis was published in May, August or December of 2023, or provisionally approved for publication by Montezuma Publishing in May 2024. The winner will receive $1,000. In addition, the winner will be presented at the University’s commencement ceremony in May and will sit with the platform party. Interested students are encouraged to contact your faculty advisor or department early in the Spring as your thesis must be nominated by your college.

Each college is invited to nominate one outstanding thesis for consideration for this prestigious award. Students with degrees awarded in May, August, and December of 2022 and those with degrees to be awarded in May 2024 are eligible. We continue to include the prior May degree recipients so that high-quality work completed too late for last year’s college selection process can participate this year. Nominees sent forward to the Graduate Studies Committee last year may not be nominated again.  

The deadline for submissions to the College of Graduate Studies for this year's competition is March 11, 2024 at 5:00 p.m.  Nominations should be sent to [email protected] with the subject line "Outstanding Thesis Nomination."   Note:  Check with your college to determine their internal deadline, which will be earlier than the CGS deadline.

Students (and former students):  Please note that each college has their own method and deadline for reviewing theses for submission to the College of Graduate Studies for consideration of this award.  If you wish to submit your thesis for your college's consideration, please reach out to the chair of your committee as soon as possible. 

Those nominated must provide an electronic copy of the thesis, a reference letter from the master's committee chairperson, and the Outstanding Thesis Award Information Form [pdf] (completed by the nominee). In addition, a second letter of reference from the college committee or dean should be provided. The letters should indicate the reasons for the nominee's selection, including some indication of the contribution made by the thesis to knowledge in the field. We ask in addition that the student fill out the Permission to Publish [pdf] form and return it to the College of Graduate Studies office; this may be done after the final selection of the Outstanding Theses by the Graduate Studies Committee and notification of the student of the award.

Please contact [email protected] or Dr. Jeffrey Honda at [email protected] with any questions you have about this process.

Previous Recipients

Graduate Students

Graduate awards & grants, outstanding thesis & dissertation awards.

The Outstanding Thesis & Dissertation Awards recognize and reward graduate students whose thesis or dissertation has been identified by the Graduate School as outstanding among all those submitted during the previous academic year.

Two awards will be given annually—one dissertation from a doctoral student and one thesis from a master's student. The recipients will receive a cash award of $500. The winning thesis may be forwarded by the University to the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools “ Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award ” competition.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the award, the nominated students must have completed their graduate degree in fall 2023, spring 2024, or summer 2024. Each SIUE master’s degree program may nominate one thesis each year, and each SIUE doctoral program may nominate one dissertation each year. All eligible candidates are encouraged to apply.

Nomination Procedure

• Nominee name and 800#
• Separate file uploads of the thesis/dissertation abstract, introduction section, and conclusion section
• The criteria the department uses to evaluate theses/dissertations internally
• Clarity of composition and organization
• Scholarship demonstrated in the thesis/dissertation
• Suitability of the author's methodology to the field
• Contribution the research makes to the discipline
• Research deliverables, including any publications, presentations, or other awards the project has garnered

Deadline for Submission

The nomination form must be submitted no later than Friday, August 30, 2024 at 4:30pm. The Department Chair nomination support and approval must be completed by  Monday, September 9, 2024 at 4:30pm.

Evaluation Criteria

Complete and eligible applications received and approved by the above deadlines will be reviewed by the Graduate Student Awards Committee using the OTA/ODA Rubric . Awards will be presented at the Graduate School's Fall Awards Reception.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is authorized to operate as a postsecondary educational institution by the  Illinois Board of Higher Education .

• Current Students
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Dismantling Democracy: Insecurity, emotions and authoritarian populism

Ispp 2024 annual meeting 4-6 july 2024 sanitago, chile.

President:  Catarina Kinnvall (Lund University, Sweden) Program Co-chairs:  Molly Andrews (University College London), Neil Ferguson (Liverpool Hope University), Siugmin Lay, (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

Conference Program (PDF)

ISPP’s 47th Annual Conference in Santiago, Chile, ISPP’s first time meeting in South America, was hugely successful. 121 sessions over three days spanned 12 thematic sections, including a section for presentations in Spanish and Portuguese. There were 480 registrants, representing 50 countries from around the globe.

This year’s conference theme “Dismantling Democracy: Insecurity, emotions and authoritarian populism” was highlighted by the related Presidential Address, keynotes, and 20 panels, roundtables, and posters. The panels and plenary sessions included discussions around the conference theme, and its relation to political psychology. The thematic sections of Social Inequality, Social Change, and Civic Development; Political Behavior, Participation, and Civic Engagement; and Public Opinion and Political Communication had the next-largest numbers of presentations, contributing to the lively discussions, debates, and updates on new research and findings that ran throughout the conference.

This year’s conference was again augmented by meetings held by the Scholars Under Threat Committee, the Caucus of Concerned Scholars, and three sessions specifically structured for Early Career Scholars. Networking-oriented events, such as the Early Career Scholars Social Hour and the Mentoring Luncheon, allowed for peer-to-peer and mentor-mentee interactions and connections to be made. And, not to be overlooked, ISPP’s presence in South America facilitated connections with local scholars and institutions, which ISPP hopes will continue during the years when the conference is held elsewhere. This annual event brings together scholars from all corners of the globe, different backgrounds and cultures, all at different points in their careers, for unequaled opportunity to expand their knowledge and ability to share findings in political psychology, and forge lasting connections and memories.

Award Winners

2024 harold lasswell award for outstanding scientific accomplishment in political psychology.

Rose McDermott , Brown University

The Lasswell Award for Outstanding Research in Political Psychology goes to Rose McDermott, the David and Mariana Fisher University Professor of International Relations at Brown University, past-president of the ISPP, and a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In the letter of nomination, the nominator noted that “This is the preeminent award in political psychology. I cannot imagine a more deserving recipient. It is mindboggling to consider the range and depth of her contributions: the field would look very different if not for Professor McDermott. Consider a few examples. In her book, Risk Taking in International Relations , she explores the role of uncertainty and sex in crisis situations. In this work, Professor McDermott recognizes limitations in extant models of foreign decision making (e.g., rational choice models), and overcomes these limitations by adopting a model based on prospect theory. She was one of the first political scientists to incorporate framing and risk-taking into political science. It set the stage for work across fields—foreign policy decision-making, opinion formation, political communication, and so on. (She edited a two-volume special issue on prospect theory, as a sign of her impact.) This book catapulted her to the top of the field as reflected by her being awarded the ISPP’s Erikson (now Sidanius) Award. Professor McDermott also was one of the early initiators of using experiments in political science. She wrote a pioneering Annual Review of Political Science paper on experimental methods, edited two special issues, and wrote an agenda-setting chapter on validity in the Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. Her insights were foundational for how political scientists do their work. (She additionally wrote a fantastic paper on experimental and case study methods.) She also was among the first in the field to explore the role of genetics in politics, doing so with appropriate thoughtfulness and nuance. On top of this, she wrote a remarkable book on presidential mental health (using extensive archival evidence), edited a book on measuring identity, and wrote on intelligence success/failure, ethics in experiments, sex/ gender, and more. Professor McDermott is, in short, a phenomenal scholar. She also has had an enormous professional impact on the field, and is a model colleague, mentor, teacher, and person. She is long overdue for this award. “  The Committee also noted McDermott’s work in collecting and making available, free of charge to any legitimate scholar, the data in WomanStats ( https://www.womanstats.org/ ), done with Valerie Hudson.

2024 Nevitt Sanford Award for Outstanding Professional Contributions to Political Psychology

Charis Psaltis , University of Cyprus

Research team composed of Larysa Zasiekina, Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University; Serhii Zasiekin, Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University ; and Victor Kuperman, McMaster University

Professor Charis Psaltis of the University of Cyprus, was nominated on the basis of his pathbreaking contributions with important political applications in three areas. (a) the study of inter-ethnic contact leading to the UN-appraised ‘Imagine Project’; (b) the widely- respective interventions by the Council of Europe and the OECD; and (c) the development of public opinion survey work on the Cypriot dispute that has shaped mediation by UN practitioners and the Greek-Turkish Forum. While Professor Psaltis has an impressive publication record across several areas, as well as service to the discipline (for instance, as the National Coordinator of Cyprus for the European Social Survey in Round 10), these are the three main areas of impact that in the Committee’s view merited the awarding of the Nevitt Sanford Award.

The Zasiekina, Zasiekin, and Kuperman team includes Larysa Zasiekina (Psychology, Member of ISPP), Professor Serhii Zasiekin (Applied Linguistics, Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University), and Professor Victor Kuperman (Linguistics, McMaster University, Canada). The Committee was especially impressed by their bilingual project “The Narratives of War (NoW) Virtual Exhibit. ” This research initiative demonstrates the research team’s dedication to promoting international peace by shedding light on the devastating realities of war. “The Narratives of War (NoW) Virtual Exhibit”, accessible at https://now.omeka.net/ , was created to amplify these Ukrainian voices as part of the lived experience  of war. By collecting and disseminating these testimonies, the project aims to contribute to the national and global cultural memory of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Featuring thousands of accounts from witnesses of all ages and regions, the NoW project serves as a timeline and map of the ongoing war, while also telling stories of suffering, resilience and hope. The bilingual (English and Ukrainian) project contributes greatly to the practical application of political-psychological principles. Additionally, “The Narratives of War (NoW) Virtual Exhibit” creates and disseminates knowledge that can be used by researchers, practitioners and advocacy groups to make a positive difference in the way politics is carried out. The digital format of the exhibit, combined with its potential for evolution in the Virtual Library, represents an innovative, creative, effective and sustainable approach to addressing political and social challenges in times of conflict and war. The evident impact of the project lies in the provision of both measurable data (a precise war chronology in terms of dates, months, and years) and qualitative insights (diverse war experiences across Ukrainian oblasts). This exhibit has the potential to serve as a valuable corpus for future interdisciplinary studies of political science, including political and social psychology, communication, statistics, testimonies, before-and-after analyses, and other pertinent research that will enhance research on intercultural competence and mutual understanding for peace.

2024 David O. Sears Best Book on Mass Politics Award

Matthew Rhodes-Purdy, Clemson University; Rachel Navarre, Bridgewater State University ; and Stephen Utych , YouGov For The Age of Discontent: Populism, Extremism, and Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Democracies

Matthew Rhodes-Purdy (Clemson University), Rachel Navarre (Bridgewater State University) and Stephen Utych’s book The Age of Discontent: Populism, Extremism, and Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Democracies , published by Cambridge University Press, offers a sweeping contribution to knowledge about the pernicious forces underlying democratic discontent in the modern era. In their book, the authors develop a theory about the “affective political economy of discontent.” Prior arguments describe economic strife and cultural backlash as competing explanations for populism, conspiracism, and extremism. By contrast, the authors’ theory bridges macro-level politics with micro-level psychology. They explain that economic change causes emotional reactions which, in turn, cause cultural and democratic discontent. The book marshals an impressive array of evidence to test each step in the theory, including experiments and surveys in the U.S. alongside comparative case studies that include countries in Europe, South America, and North America. Their careful theory and analyses leave leaders with a richer understanding of the challenges to preserving democracy in the twenty-first century. 

2024 Juliette and Alexander L. George Outstanding Political Psychology Book Award

Alessandro Nai, University of Amsterdam; and Jürgen Maier , University of Koblenz-Landau For Dark Politics: The Personality of Politicians and the Future of Democracy

Alessandro Nai (University of Amsterdam) and Jürgen Maier’s (University of Koblenz-Landau) book Dark Politics: The Personality of Politicians and the Future of Democracy , published by Oxford University Press, establishes a new frontier in research on the electoral implications of politicians’ personalities. The book introduces new data on the “dark triad” of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism among electoral candidates worldwide. They explore how “dark” politicians campaign, when they win, how they govern, and which voters find dark personalities appealing. This agenda-setting book has important implications for understanding the rise of dark politics and the future of democracy around the world.

2024 Jim Sidanius Early Career Award

Carly Wayne , Washington University St. Louis

The winner for the Jim Sidanius Early Career Award is Carly Wayne (Assistant Professor, Washington University in St Louis). While we received numerous very strong nominations, we feel that her file stands out for being particularly strong. As aptly summarized by her nominee, “You will see from her CV that she is an extraordinary young scholar, already widely published and having a major impact only 4 years after her PhD was granted. I count 1 award-winning Stanford Press book with Alex Mintz, another coauthored text at Cambridge, 12 peer reviewed papers already published, and many other papers under review or in preparation. Her dissertation won 3 major awards, including Best Dissertation in Political Psychology in 2019. At this writing, her work has already been cited more than 800 times according to Google Scholar, and her rate of impact is steeply increasing. She has been invited to give dozens of presentations at universities and workshops around the world, despite the pandemic, since 2019. This is an astounding level of productivity, impact, and acclaim for someone so young.” Dr Wayne is highly deserving of this award and we are thrilled to be able to announce her as the 2024 winner of the Jim Sidanius Early Career Award.

2024 John L. Sullivan Mentorship Award

Leonie Huddy , Stony Brook University

The winner for the John Sullivan Award for Outstanding Mentorship is Dr. Leonie Huddy. Dr. Huddy’s letters of nomination and support were glowing, and scholars pointed to her incredible generosity as a tough but kind mentor, who pushed them to work harder and think more clearly about their concepts and ideas. They note her tireless work in the discipline, to mentor not only her own students at Stony Brook, but the entire community in political psychology, through her various collaborative projects, her networking initiatives, and her genuine interest in the success and careers of her mentees. One nominee stated, “You will not find a professor more generous with their time to meet, read work, and provide feedback than Dr. Leonie Huddy,” and this observation was confirmed over and over again by the supporting letter writers. Dr Huddy has had a long and successful career, and has spent a good deal of that time trying to support and improve the experiences of those she has worked with. She is highly deserving of this award.

2024 Jeanne Knutson Award

Paul Nesbitt-Larking , Huron University College

The Jeanne Knutson Award for Outstanding Service to the ISPP goes to Paul Nesbitt-Larking. The nominator said in their letter of nomination, “Paul has very actively served in leadership roles in ISPP for 20 years.  He has chaired several committees, especially serving on the Erik Erikson (now Sidanius) Prize Committee and on several conference organising committees.  He has been President and Vice President, and has been an active and energetic member of the Executive Board. He also serves one the editorial board of Political Psychology . In addition to his citizenship for the organisation, he has an outstanding academic record in the field, with editorial or author roles in six books and an important series for Palgrave.  He has published extensively in academic journals and policy reports.  His work in particular reflects a very strongly international scope of research and commentary, which is congruent with ISPP’s agenda.  His work is very innovative and he is a leader in the field of narrative research. Paul is the kind of scholar who typifies what ISPP stands for, and the message we are purveying to the international academic and policy communities.” In addition to these qualifications, the Committee noted that Paul Nesbitt-Larking has been active in the Caucus of Concerned Scholars: Committee on Ethics and Morality, and has done yeoman service as a reviewer for the journal, Political Psychology.

2024 Roberta Sigel Best Conference Paper by Early Career Member Award 1

Elisabetta Mannoni , Political Science Department, LUISS, Rome

“Pro-environmental voting: what it is, how to measure it, and its determinants among contemporary European voters”

Elisabetta’s paper was highly commended by the Award Committee for reporting on an innovative piece of research that pushes forward conceptual understanding of pro-environmental voting in political psychology through an impressive analysis of large-scale multi-national data. The paper examined pro-environment behaviour through voting- specifically whether individuals vote for a party or candidate who emphasises environmental protection. It drew on the Chapel Hill Expert survey to categorise political parties in terms of their green credentials and then, on data from 26 European countries as part of the European Social Survey to assess the predictors of pro-environmental voting. Findings demonstrated, most notably, that pro-environmental voting was driven by moral obligation- i.e., people who felt responsible for environmental issues tended to vote for parties who emphasise environmental protection. Collective response efficacy, however, did not predict voting behaviour. Some demographic variations were also found, for example, younger voters tended to vote more in favour of environmental parties than older voters. Taken together, the paper demonstrates a novel conceptualisation and measurement of pro-environmental voting that makes an important contribution to the field. The Award Committee recognised the excellence of this research and commended Elisabetta for producing such a strong piece of research at an early career stage.

2024 Roberta Sigel Best Conference Paper by Early Career Member Award 2

Claire M. Gothreau , Aarhus University, Denmark

The paper first authored by Claire was highly commended by the Award Committee. The research, which examined the underrepresentation of women in politics, represents one of the most comprehensive examinations of the phenomenon to date, drawing on samples from twenty countries across five continents, using a conjoint candidate choice experimental design. All main hypotheses and analyses were pre-registered. Findings showed that voters generally preferred women candidates. This pro-female bias held in 14 countries, with only one country evidencing a pro-male bias. Macro-level factors that predicted a preference for women candidates were country-level representation of women in parliament, gender equality, and levels of democracy, whereas individual-level factors that predicted this preference were being female, politically left-leaving, and low endorsement of hostile sexism. The scope, timeliness, and theoretical and methodological rigor of the research makes it a stand-out paper led by an early career researcher.

2024 Best Dissertation Award

Ramzi Abou-Ismail , University of Kent

The winner for the Best Dissertation Award 2024 is Dr. Ramzi Abou-Ismail (University of Kent). While we received numerous very strong nominations and in the evaluation process read a number of excellent dissertations, we found that Ramzi Abou-Ismail’s dissertation “The Structure of Collective Violence Beliefs: Scale Development, Predictors, and Outcomes” stood out. In addition to theoretical innovations and methodological rigour, we focused on the societal relevance of the research in our assessment. In his outstanding dissertation, Ramzi Abou-Ismail, bridging social identity and dual process model approaches, developed a scale on collective violence beliefs. The scale looks at both outgroup members and leaders and was tested in Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, three non-WEIRD countries (non-White, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic) as well as the United States. The findings have implications for peace-building and development of interventions to prevent collective violence. Moreover, the new, innovative instrument can be readily used in future research.

Honorable Mentions

Beatriz Besen , University of São Paulo

We also recognise two honourable mentions for dissertations of Dr. Beatriz Besen (University of São Paulo, now visiting researcher at Barcelona Center of Discoursive studies) “Nos limiares do(a) político(a): (des/re)construindo trajetórias e narrativas de jovens ativistas das Direitas Radicais no Brasil e na Alemanha” and Dr. Naima Green-Riley (Harvard University, now assistant professor at Princeton University) “How to Win Friends and Influence People Overseas:  The U.S., China, and the Microfoundations of Public Diplomacy.”

Naima Green-Riley , Princeton University

Catarina Kinnvall, ISPP President, Lund University, Sweden Presidental Address

Grievances as Loss: Ontological insecurity, postcolonial melancholia, and masculinism. This presentation will address the particular narratives and discourses that respond to increased feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and fear, so called ‘ontological insecurities’, and their connections to postcolonial imaginaries of increasingly authoritarian polities. I discuss how such narratives and discourses are emotionally governed and psychoanalytically resonant in their focus on imaginary pasts and futures and how they are accelerated by the ubiquity of hybrid media that have allowed for increasingly populist authoritarian forces to efficiently spread their emotional messages. In the presentation I spell out how specific grievances and attachments are being rethought, re-justified and reimagined through postcolonial pasts and practices, and how narratives of ‘trauma’, ‘nationhood’ and ‘masculinism’ explain the desires, violence and ruptures involved in postcolonial bordering and gendered subject formation. In addition, I discuss how, and to what extent, resistance is possible.

Elizabeth Lira, Alberto Hurtado University, Chile Reparation and Recognition of victims of human rights violations

The year 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the military coup in Chile that led to a 17-year dictatorship characterized by human rights violations. The violence resulted in thousands of victims, prisoners and tortured, victims of forced disappearance and extrajudicial executions. The talk will be a reflection on the process of recognition and reparation of the victims and their families as part of the policies of the transition from dictatorship to democratic government through the establishment of truth, justice, and memory, which today constitute transdisciplinary fields of research, professional practices, and political action.

Agustín Espinosa, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú Democratic Weakening from Citizen Decision-Making: Political Moral Laxity as a Consequence of Perverse Political Socialization

Political structures and dynamics characterized by a high prevalence of structural violence, corruption and systemic malfunctioning, as in the case of some Latin American societies, seem to produce in citizens reasonings such as “all politicians are the same so it is acceptable to vote for a candidate who steals, but do the work” or “it is right to vote for those politicians we consider as the ‘lesser evil.'” The above shows that the political systems to which we are exposed act as socializing forces with a potential impact on how we will position ourselves before the public, the collective, the private and the individual as dimensions of the political. Types of reasoning such as those mentioned previously have been systematized and have allowed the coining of the concept of Political Moral Laxity, which comprises “a set of beliefs and political attitudes of citizens who tolerate, and even favor, dishonest, transgressive and corrupt actions carried out by politicians and authorities.” Although these actions could individually or collectively benefit those who accept them, they can cause harm or damage to other citizens and society in general, establishing tensions between the private and the public, where the latter is constantly left aside. This presentation will emphasize the social conditions in which Political Moral Laxity occurs and gains strength, as well as, the potential consequences it has for democracy.

Call for Papers / Conference Theme / Submission

Conference Theme: Dismantling Democracy: Insecurity, emotions and authoritarian populism

President : Catarina Kinnvall (Lund University, Sweden)

Program Co-chairs : Molly Andrews (University College London), Neil Ferguson (Liverpool Hope University), Siugmin Lay, (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

Submission Deadline: 29 November 2023

Our Call for Papers can be viewed HERE .

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Dr. Tijana Karić holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She works as a research fellow at the Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research in Belgrade, Serbia, and since October 2021, she is a Humboldt research fellow at the Philipps University Marburg, Germany. In her research, Tijana applies qualitative as well as quantitative methods to explore intergroup relations.

Her main research focus is on intergroup relations in post-conflict societies, with regard to identity processes. The case study she explores primarily is Bosnia and Herzegovina. Additionally, she is interested in prejudice and discrimination as well as challenges of integration of marginalized groups. Lately, she has put more focus on evidence-based policymaking, i.e., creating evidence for meaningful social change.

Dr. Myrto Pantazi holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the Université libre de Bruxelles, where she is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher. Myrto previously held post-doctoral positions at the University of Cambridge and the Oxford Internet Institute. She also worked for one year as a Policy Analyst at the Joint Research Center of  the European Commission where she was providing behavioural insights for policy-making.

Myrto’s research interests broadly cover the psychology of beliefs. Combining experimental and survey methodology she mainly studies how people validate information, and why they believe in  misinformation. She is also interested in conspiracy beliefs and their relationship to socio-political attitudes, and she has conducted research on social influence in public opinion as well as  on sustainable investment decisions.

Dr Slieman Halabi studied did his masters in cognitive psychology at Tel Aviv University and his PhD in social psychology at the Friedrich Schiller University and The International Max Planck Research School on Adapting Behavior in a Fundamentally  Uncertain  World in Jena. He works as a post-doc at the University of Wuppertal in Germany. His research interest revolves around the influence of our social identities on interactions with ingroup and outgroup members. His PhD thesis was concerned with in-between members who straddle the group memberships in group that are immersed in an intergroup conflict, and how in-between groups can be seen as a threat to intergroup boundaries but also how they navigate their intergroup orientations within this set of complex relations. Recently, Slieman has been conducting research that looks at the misrecognition of minority group members (in means of identity denial and other “micro-aggressions”) and it affects their relationship with the majority society. He also examines the ways in which minority members’ responses to such experience can be constructively dealt with by majority group members and thus tests interventions to reduce defensiveness to criticism against micro-aggressions. Besides, Slieman is interested in the role language and linguistic styles (e.g., accent) in relation within and across social groups.

Dr. Neuner is an Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan in 2018. His research focuses on political psychology, political behavior, and public opinion, both in the U.S. and in comparative contexts.  In his current research, he is interested in understanding the cognitive and affective drivers of attitude polarization, the mechanisms underlying media effects such as priming and framing, and citizens’ responsiveness to populist appeals.

Jessica Gale is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and KU Leuven in Belgium, on a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is also a Senior Researcher at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, in collaboration with the National Center of Competence in Research – The Migration-Mobility Nexus. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva, an MSc in Psychology from the same institution, a BEd from Queen’s University, and a BA in Psychology from Trent University. Adopting experimental and multilevel methodologies, her research centres on cultural diversity, immigration, and social justice from an intergroup relations perspective.

Dr. Islam Borinca is a Lecturer/Asst Professor in the School of Psychology, University College Dublin. He obtained his doctorate degree in Social Psychology from the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne as a PhD Scholarship Excellence Recipient on an individual PhD project sponsored by the Swiss Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students. Afterward, he worked as a teaching/research assistant at the Center Emile Bernheim, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels). Following that, he conducted his postdoctoral research at the University of Limerick (Ireland). His research focuses on intergroup relations, specifically examining help, contact, and group norms, with an emphasis on emotions, empathy, dehumanization, meta-dehumanization, intergroup apologies, prejudice, and discrimination in hostile and non-hostile contexts. He also investigates gender norms, gender roles, and behaviors. In addition, his research examines intragroup processes in regards to threats, expectations, and health.

Ruri Takizawa is a PhD Candidate in Social Psychology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She completed her BSc in Psychology at Bielefeld University (Germany) and her MSc in Social Cognition at University College London (England).

In her research, Ruri focuses on the  glass cliff  phenomenon using a mix of experimental, archival, and survey data. She investigates what kind of leadership is demanded in different types of crises, which expectations arise when underrepresented group members (i.e., women and ethnic, racial, and immigration minority group members) occupy leadership roles in politics and organizations, and how these candidates are evaluated.

Daniel majored in Psychology (Licentiate) from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He worked work for several years in the Social Psychology Lab under the guide of Prof. Roberto Gonzalez and Prof. Jorge Manzi. After working there, he applied to a PGR (post graduate researchers) in Computational Social Science in the University of Leeds with Dr. Viktoria Spaiser and Dr. Richard Mann as supervisors, where he has been working on NLP (Natural Language Processing) and AI (Artificial Intelligence) for Language projects linked to social media and social movements.

Broadly speaking, he is interested in the use of “big data” from digital sources -such as social media, IoT or just general digital footprint- to model human behavior. My current PhD project attempts to use the public digital footprint on social media of populations that are currently undergoing periods of social unrest to extract their general emotional patterns, all of this with the goal to build a predictive model of activism based on these parameters.

Felipe received his BA in Psychology from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. He earned his MSc degree and is a PhD Student at the Psychology Graduate Program of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), advisored by Dr. Angelo Brandelli Costa (PUCRS, Brazil). He is the Technical Editor of the Revista Argentina de Ciencias del Comportamiento and Managing Editor of the journal Trends in Psychology. He is also the Moderator of the global open-science preprint platform PsyarXiv. The current main research themes are authoritarianism, social dominance and corruption.

Rongbo Jin is a PhD student in political science at the University of Arizona in the US. He mainly focuses on political psychology, political behavior, and public opinion with the context of American politics. His ongoing projects investigate the nature and effects of affective polarization and its association with partisanship and political ideology. Methodologically, he uses survey experiments, text analysis, item response theory, structural equation model and other quantitative methods. He was the manager for Arizona Policy Lab at the University of Arizona which is dedicated to addressing pressing social problems based on cutting edge scientific practices and cross-disciplinary collaborations.