VPUE
VPUE
Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

Golden, Firestone, and Kennedy Thesis Awards

The top undergraduate honors theses are recognized annually

The Firestone and Golden Medals are awarded to the top 10 percent of honors theses completed each year. The Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research recognizes theses written in the social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. The Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts similarly distinguishes theses in the humanities or creative projects in the arts. The awardees each received an engraved bronze medal and a monetary award.

In addition to receiving the Firestone or Golden medal, the David M. Kennedy Prize is awarded to the single best thesis in each of four areas: humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering & applied sciences. Recipients of this award have accomplished exceptionally advanced research in the field and have shown strong potential for publication in peer-reviewed scholarly works. The prize was established in 2008 in recognition of history professor David M. Kennedy’s long-standing mentoring of undergraduate writers. Winners each received an engraved plaque and a monetary award.

The projects conducted by the winners capture the breadth of the undergraduate experience at Stanford and span diverse academic areas, from the sciences to the arts.

The Nomination Process

All nominations for Golden, Firestone, and Kennedy thesis awards must be made by the department or honors program, so individual faculty who wish to nominate students should contact the honors program to learn more about their specific process. An official announcement with detailed nomination instructions will be sent in early March, and nominations are due to VPUE in week 8 of spring quarter. These communications come from the VPUE Medals email account.

Nominations for the 2026 competition were due on May 22, 2026. 

Departments and faculty are welcome to contact vpue-medals@stanford.edu at any point with questions about the nomination and award process. The basic criteria are that the thesis should stand out as exceptional in five areas: originality, rigorous deployment of research method, value of research to the field, quality of argument, and quality of presentation according to standards of the field. All students who submit their final honors thesis between Summer 2025 and Spring 2026 are eligible to be nominated for the 2026 competition by their department or honors program, regardless of their official date of graduation.

Students with questions should contact their honors program, as each program sets their own process for how to determine the top theses in that department. Deadlines and eligibility will vary by department.

Medals Luncheon

The Golden, Firestone, and Kennedy awards are presented at the annual Undergraduate Medals Celebration, held midday on the Saturday of Commencement Weekend. The luncheon offers an opportunity for families and thesis advisors to meet and mingle as their student is honored.

2026 Prize Winners Announced

Please note we publish awards for the current year. If students would like a record of their award, please screenshot or print your award page.

David M. Kennedy Honors Thesis Prizes

All Kennedy Prize recipients are also awarded either a Firestone or Golden Medal.

Engineering and Applied Sciences: Samantha Reising, Chemical Engineering. "Carbon Dioxide Conversion Using Electrochemical and Chemical Methods." Mentored by Thomas Jaramillo

Arts & Humanities: Evan Ludington, History. "A Californian Calamity: Constructing Collective Meaning in the Great Flood of 1862." Mentored by Kathryn Olivarius and Caroline Winterer

Natural Sciences: Lela Hanson, Geophysics. "Assessing Distributed Acoustic Sensing Amplitudes for Ground Motion Characterization on Telecommunication Fiber Networks." Mentored by Ettore Biondi

Social Sciences: Miriam Aminah Awan, Earth Systems. "Adapting to Leave: The Effects of Climate Change and Adaptation on Household Migration in South Asian Deltas." Mentored by Hélène Benveniste

Firestone Medals for Excellence in Undergraduate Research

Maya Isabella Agarwal, Economics. “Beyond the Letter of the Law: How Bankruptcy Reform Shapes Bond Markets in Emerging Economies.” Mentored by Darrell Duffie

Lena Braun, Human Biology. “Exploring clinical and community-based modes of transgender health education.” Mentored by Marcia Stefanick, Jennifer Wolf, and Benji Laniakea

Che Cherry Chen, Biology. “Input Architecture of Serotonin Subsystems across Female Reproductive States.” Mentored by Liqun Luo

Lilian Naing Chen, Computer Science. “Poking the World: Probabilistic World Modeling for Physical Scene Understanding.” Mentored by Daniel L.K. Yamins

Lynn Collardin, Psychology. “Artificial Affect: How AI Represents Cultural Variation in Emotion.” Mentored by Jeanne Tsai

Han Dao, Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. “From ‘Swamp’ to ‘Golden Land’: Class, Aesthetics, and Dispossession in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City.” Mentored by David Palumbo Liu and Emma Shaw Crane

Nora Ranck Dee, Psychology. “Inferring personality traits from conversation.” Mentored by Judith Fan

Héloïse Hoffmann, Bioengineering. “Development of an Epigenetic DUX4 Pathway Inhibitor to Regain Transcriptome-Wide Homeostasis as a Novel Therapeutic Approach for Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD).” Mentored by Stanley Qi

Sebastian Kane, Sociology. “From Post to Protest: Networked Social Movements and the Digital Diffusion of Collective Action.” Mentored by Susan Olzak

Taeil Matthew Kim, Center for International Security and Cooperation. “Artificial Intelligence for Biodefense Against Bioweapons: Deterrence by Denial Through Integrated Patient and System Level Interventions.” Mentored by Drew Endy and Colin Kahl

Montana Lagat, Materials Science and Engineering. “Optimization of Photoresin and Processing Conditions for 3D-Printed Pyrolyzed Lattice Electrodes with High Carbon Yield and Electrochemical Performance.” Mentored by Joseph DeSimone

Megan Liu, Economics. “Extending the Reproductive Timeline: Fertility Benefits and Hiring Composition.” Mentored by Petra Persson

Gia Mukherjee, International Relations. “The ‘Nowhere People’ of Assam: A Critical Institutionalist Account of Citizenship Adjudication in India.” Mentored by David Cohen

Ishani Mukherjee, Mathematics. “How to Share Multiple Quantum Secrets.” Mentored by Mark Zhandry

Aaron Omon, Human Biology. “Investigating Neuronal Injury During Neonatal Cardiopulmonary Bypass Surgery in a Porcine Model.” Mentored by Daniel Spielman, Paul Fisher, and Holly Sewell

Megan Parada, Biology. “A Customized Defense: Bispecific Antibodies Binding Functional Domains in the S1 and S2 Subunits of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein.” Mentored by Christopher Barnes

Alexandre Ravel, Bioengineering. “Tracking Activity Dynamics at the Serotonergic Neuron-High Grade Glioma Interface.” Mentored by Michelle Monje-Deisseroth

Nabikshya Rayamajhi, Political Science. “Beyond the Ban: Exploring Why Chhaupadi Persists in Nepal Despite Legal Prohibitions.” Mentored by Soledad Prillaman

Sophia Mae Rebolledo, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. “Strangers By Design: Knowledge, Care, and the Architecture of Reproductive Authority in Post-Dobbs California.” Mentored by Alyssa Burgart

Iren Saffarian-Deemyad, Physics. “DNA Torque Spectroscopy and Applications to Ancestral RNA-Guided Endonucleases.” Mentored by Zev Bryant

Renn Su, Computer Science. “Climate Twins: Domain-Augmented Generative Agents for Predicting Individual-Level Climate Attitudes.” Mentored by Michael S. Bernstein

Lavanya M. Sundar, Science, Technology, and Society. “An Audit of Studies Comparing the Accuracy of Probability and Non-Probability Sample Surveys.” Mentored by Jon Krosnick

Marco Widodo, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law. “When Democracy Counts: Testing the Demand-Side Micrologics of Backsliding with Evidence from Indonesia.” Mentored by Larry Diamond

Lucy Artemis Xu, Biology. “Too Much of a Good Thing: Novel Ciliary GPCR, P2RY14, Acts as a Glucose-Dependent Brake on Insulin Secretion in Pancreatic β-Cells.” Mentored by Peter K. Jackson

Sunny Yu, Symbolic Systems. “The efficiency-gain illusion: People underestimate the rate of AI use and overestimate its benefits on simple tasks.” Mentored by Robert D. Hawkins and Dan Jurafsky

Luke Zhao, Biology. “TDP-43 is a DNA-Binding Chromatin Factor in ALS.” Mentored by Aaron Gitler

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

Zoe Ehrlich, Theater & Performance Studies. “Dog Days.” Mentored by Diana Looser and Amy Freed

James Lux Fox, Comparative Literature. “Writing John Childers.” Mentored by Amir Eshel

Vivian Chen Liang, Art & Art History. “Female Donor Portraiture and the Politics of Patronage in the Cao Family Caves at Dunhuang (914–1006).” Mentored by Richard Vinograd and John Kieschnick

Jason Wilson Navarro-Lopez, Stanford Arts Institute. “Gravity of the Immigrant.” Mentored by Regina Pieck

Kristine Petrov Pashin, Symbolic Systems. “The Biology of Becoming: Neural Stem Cell Technologies and the Limits of Categorical Governance.” Mentored by Henry T. Greely and Sarah Heilshorn

Zoë Rehnborg, Art & Art History. “Permeable Bodies: Mindful of You the Sodden Earth.” Mentored by Camille Utterback and Terry Berlier

Eli Ward Toney, History. “Creating Slavery: Towards a Coherent Theory of Mississippi Slave Law, 1817-1860.” Mentored by Anne Twitty and Jonathan Gienapp

Rachelle Weiss, Music. “Desire to Roam: a Capstone Voice Recital.” Mentored by Kathryne Jennings

Stephanie Zhang 张雯嘉, Stanford Arts Institute. “Emergent Vessels / Synthetic Cesia: Self-Assembling, Living Sculptures via 3D Bioprinting and Cuttlefish-Inspired Photonic Skins.” Mentored by Alexander Nemerov

Tatiana Zhang, Classics. “Platonically Correct: Callimachus and the Reception of Platonic Poetics.” Mentored by John Tennant

More Questions?

If you have questions about the Golden, Firestone, and Kennedy Awards or the Medals Luncheon that are not answered here, please email vpue-medals@stanford.edu.