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.

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

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

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 9 of spring quarter. These communications come from the VPUE Medals email account.

Nominations for the 2025 competition were due on May 27, 2025. 

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.

2025 Prize Winners Announced

David M. Kennedy Honors Thesis Prizes

Engineering and Applied Sciences: Caitlin Elizabeth Ramos, Mechanical Engineering. "Concentric Push-Pull Tube Robots for Embedded 3D Printing." Mentored by Mark Skylar-Scott and Allison Okamura

Arts & Humanities: Feiyang Kuang, English. "Between Scholarship and Fiction: Attempts at Restitution in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz." Mentored by Alex Woloch and Nancy Ruttenburg

Natural Sciences: Karla Perez, Psychology. "Sight in the Making: Differential Microstructural Development in Gray and White Matter of the Dorsal, Lateral, and Ventral Visual Streams in First Year of Infant Life." Mentored by Kalanit Grill-Spector

Social Sciences: Tiana Lakhani, International Relations. "Digital Brinkmanship: North Korea’s Cyber Evolution and the Role of AI." Mentored by Dafna Zur

Firestone Medals for Excellence in Undergraduate Research

Alexandra Torres Arsuaga, Psychology. “‘Shame on the Family, Shame on Herself’: Understanding Community Reactions to Sexual Violence Among Latinas and White American Women in the U.S.” Mentored by Hazel Markus

Chris Badillo, Education. “School Board Politics: Portrayals of Race, Class, and Immigration in Miami-Dade School Board Member Policy Proposals.” Mentored by Francis Pearman and Ari Y. Kelman

Kenneth Duy Bui, Science, Technology & Society. “Cybernetic in Form, Conservative in Content: Technocracy and Techno-Solutionism in the Soviet Union.” Mentored by Paul Edwards.

Quanlin Chen, Mathematics. “Langlands conjugation conjecture of Shimura varieties.” Mentored by Richard Taylor.

Grace Meiwah Chow, Human Biology. “Optimization of Electrospray on Technology for Cell Therapy Delivery.” Mentored by Anthony Oro and Jill Helms.

Katherine Dong, Biology. “Endosome-associated Rab GTPases control distinct aspects of neuronal morphogenesis and circuit assembly.” Mentored by Liqun Luo

Eric Gao, Economics. “Paired Course and Dorm Allocation.” Mentored by Paul Milgrom

Diego Gutierrez, Earth System Science. “Gandules, Yuca, and Malanga: The Possibility of Backyard Agriculture and Implications for Food Sovereignty in Puerto Rico.” Mentored by Scott Fendorf and Anna Gomes

Jennifer Lauren Hamad, Biology. “Novel Discrete Immolative Guanidinium Transporters Deliver mRNA Selectively to the Spleen, Lungs, and Red Blood cells, Reaching the Brain.” Mentored by Paul Wender

Jingyi Han, Chemical Engineering. “Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Aminosilane Molecules as Inhibitors for HfO2 Area-Selective Atomic Layer Deposition on SiO2.” Mentored by Stacey F. Bent

Annika Johnson, Human Biology. “The Role of Neuregulin Signaling in Nerve Regeneration After Injury.” Mentored by William Talbot, Margaret Fuller, and Dan Lysko

Rhea Rai Arora Malhotra, Computer Science. “Robust Robot Learning in Unseen and Dynamic Environments.” Mentored by Jeannette Bohg

Jaston McClure, Biology. “Calcineurin-ERK Antagonism at the Nuclear Pore Complex Regulates Bi-Directional Nuclear Transport.” Mentored by Martha Cyert

Declan Murphy Zink, Physics. “Topological Surface Waves on Low-Temperature Gaseous Magnetized Plasma: Theory, Computation, and Detection.” Mentored by Mark A. Cappelli

Laisha Ozuna, Sociology. “New Year, New School: A Comparative Study Examining Choice Enrollment Policies in the San Diego Unified School District.” Mentored by Sarah Levine

Ashwin Prabu, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. “Freedom or Control? Expanding a Relational Understanding of ICE’s Alternatives to Detention Program.” Mentored by Asad Asad

Jefferson Pruett, Economics. “Assessing Accuracy of Matched Sample Surveys: Evidence from the Cooperative Election Study.” Mentored by Jon Krosnick and Hunt Allcott

Anushka Sanyal, Human Biology. “RNAs act as chaperones to protect against cellular stress.” Mentored by Aaron Gitler and Eunice Rodriguez

Charles Sheiner, Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law. “The Limits of Payout Politics: How Biden-Harris Federal Spending Shaped (and Didn’t Shape) the 2024 Presidential Vote.” Mentored by Jonathan Rodden and Larry Diamond

Sruthi Subramanian, Bioengineering. “Ephrin-A Mediated Axonogenesis in Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma Microenvironment.” Mentored by Michelle Monje

Raina Talwar Bhatia, Center for International Security and Cooperation. “Pave, Rain, Leptospira Gain - Impact of Climate and Land-Use Change on Leptospirosis in Brazil, 2007-2023.” Mentored by Erin Mordecai

Nicole Elizete Theberath, Chemistry. “Clonal Behavior of Engineered CAR T Cells.” Mentored by Ansuman Satpathy and Theodore Roth

Helena Gurgel Vasconcelos, Symbolic Systems. “Understanding and Acting on Algorithmic Recommendations.” Mentored by Michael Bernstein and Tobias Gerstenberg

Johnathan Xie, Computer Science. “Autoregressive Rectified Flow for Motion Prediction.” Mentored by Jiajun Wu

Maya Emily Xu, Biology. “On leaden wings: Tracking heavy metal contamination in Pacific Coast raptors.” Mentored by Rodolfo Dirzo

Nika Zahedi, Electrical Engineering. “Practical Design of Mode-Division Multiplexing Systems with Group-Delay Compensation Guided by Closed-Form Statistics.” Mentored by Joseph M. Kahn

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

Cyrus D’Arcy, Music. “Organ Recital.” Mentored by Robert Huw Morgan and Jesse Rodin.

Zelig Dov, History. “In the Shadow of Memory: The Long Road to a Berlin Museum about the German Expellees.” Mentored by Norman Naimark and James Campbell

Alice Grace, Art & Art History. “Grounda.” Mentored by Paul DeMarinis and Terry Berlier

Junah Jang, Stanford Arts Institute. “ALL MY BASKETS ARE IN ONE EGG, a stage play.” Mentored by Michael Rau

Sandi Win Khine, Science, Technology & Society. “Silicon Valley Dreaming: Regressive Fantasies in an Age of Automation.” Mentored by Aileen Robinson

Jane Lord-Krause, American Studies. “Linguistic Representations of Native Americans in Early Dime Novels.” Mentored by Jennifer Johnson and Judith Richardson

Lyn Lee Loth, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. “Eating Taro.” Mentored by Aracelis Girmay

Camille Luong, Urban Studies. “City of Yearning: Space, Time, and Movement in Tsai Ming-liang's Turn of the 21st Century Taipei.” Mentored by Ban Wang and Ato Quayson

Shaye Story, Ethics in Society. “Politics of the Plate: Culinary Colonialism and Hawaiian Food Sovereignty.” Mentored by Vena A-dae Romero-Briones and Ben Mylius

Isabella Terrazas, Stanford Arts Institute. “Archival Orchesis.” Mentored by amara tabor-smith

Vernita Zhai, Symbolic Systems. “Eternalising the Apocalypse: Blake’s Cartography of (Bio/Onto)logical Becoming.” Mentored by Denise Gigante and Alexander Nemerov

Anna Zheng, Theater & Performance Studies. “Three States of Matter.” Mentored by Becky Bodurtha

Past recipients: Golden, Firestone, and Kennedy Thesis Awards

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.