Deans', Chancellor's and Steck Awards
2017 Chancellor's Award winners with their Faculty Mentors and Chancellor Blumenthal (Photo by Michael Pratt)
Deans' Awards are granted to 50 of the most outstanding undergraduate research theses or projects completed during the current academic year, 10 from each of the academic divisions. Chancellor's Awards are granted to the most excellent submissions out of the Dean's Award winners in each academic division. Both awards recognize excellence in undergraduate research and creativity as evidenced through completed projects and theses. Each Dean's Award project will receive a $100 award. Each Chancellor's Award project will receive a $500 award. Chancellor's Award projects are then considered for the Steck Award. The names of the all winners are displayed on the Deans' and Chancellor's Award website here and are also announced at college commencement ceremonies. 2021 Award Guidelines: Click Here
2021 AWARD RECIPIENTS
Each student or student team worked on a senior research or milestone project and is mentored by a UCSC faculty member, postdoc, graduate student, or researcher (noted in parentheses below). A committee in each division selects the Deans’ Award recipients. Winners of the Chancellor’s Awards, noted by an * asterisk before the winner's name, are recognized as being one of the top 3 projects from each of the five Divisions. Project details and the mentor name(s) can be seen by clicking the project title link.
Division of the Arts
*Jacinto Pruefer Salz (Porter): AFTER BURNS
*Klytie Xu (Porter): For Each Name, A Color; For Each Color, A Name
*Holly Genevieve Edelman (Stevenson): Standing Watch for Wandjina: The Systematic Setbacks of Aboriginal Cultural Copyrighting
Jourdain Boyd Barton (Kresge): "Other Art Histories: Islam,'Art,' and the Baptistère de Saint Louis" (Research Paper)
Christina Nicole Conti (Cowell): Alexander the Great and Alexios III of Trebizond: Culture as Politics
Reya Simone Borbridge (Porter): Farms, Farmers, and the Field
Kirra Amanda Lilith Mccoll (Kresge): Guerrilla Gardener
Gioh Sung (Cowell): In Absentia
Jordan Fickel (Porter): oliveros bot
Kylie Paige Smith (Ten): Speaking from the Heart: A Senior Lecture Recital
Jack Baskin School of Engineering
*Dominic Alexander Lucchesi (Crown) and *Aviv Brook (Stevenson): Analysis of the First Malware to Attack a Power Grid
*Serafina Maria Nieves (Eight): Identifying and Investigating Wolbachia-to-Arthropod HGT Events
Maxim Alexandr Kuznetsov (Crown): A New Dimension: Visualizing Immersive Genome Graphs
Arash Parsa (Merrill): Co2 Monitoring Assembly - Arash Parsa
Michelle Beth Shimberg (Cowell): Development of a Non-Enzymatic Electrochemical Glucose Sensor using Copper Oxide
Kyra Skye Eyerman (Porter), Rachel A Mace (Cowell), Melody Saravi Azimi (Nine), Alicia Charlotte Jorgenson (Eight), Sophia Alexis Huei Min Sneddon (Eight), Navdeep Singh Kalkat (Ten), Joshua Robert Elkins (Oakes), Claudia Fiorella Paz Flores (Ten), Faith Marie Williams (Crown), Taylor Ann Ziccardi (Cowell), Gabriel Sanchez (Kresge), Neil Oliver Smith (Merrill), and Thomas Conor Kensok (Porter): Komaplastics: Cellulose-Based Biodegradable Agricultural Plastic
Issei Mori (Nine): Physarum Telam
Division of Humanities
*Paola Alexandra Berumen (Kresge): Expedited Removal in 2020. An Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security vs. Thuraisingam Supreme Court Case
*Jonah Michael Gertz (Porter): Japan and Methamphetamine: the Afterlife of Occupation and the Hiropon Age
*Ashley Ippolito (Ten), *Yutong Guo (Cowell), *Sage Brooke Meadows (Crown), *Olivia Katherine Tarango (Cowell), and *Noa Nevo (Stevenson): The Effect of Reduced Relative Clauses on Agreement Production
Avni Sunaina Lal (Cowell): Modalities of Governance: Cartography in Colonial Africa
Maya Catalina Gonzalez (Cowell): Remember Us: Holocaust Representations in European-Jewish Émigré Film, 1942-1945
Matthew C Tracey-Cook (Stevenson): The 1721 Boston Smallpox Epidemic and the Origins of the Opinion Editorial
Kimberly Ashley Szeto (Nine): The Emergence of an Ever-Changing Hong Kong Identity
Jasmine Simone (Kresge): The Idealized Feminine Self: Effortlessly Sexy, Confident, and Cool
Vicky Chin (Ten), Olivia Katherine Tarango (Cowell), Mary Shamon (Stevenson), and Alyssa L Rodriguez (Cowell): The Stela of Maya: Family and Marriage Relations in Ancient Egypt
Division of Physical & Biological Sciences
*Sneha Sandip Jariwala (Ten): Molecular Classification of Pediatric High-Risk Leukemias Using Expression Profiles of Multimodally Expressed Genes
*Ishana Shukla (Oakes): Variation in resting strategies across trophic levels and habitats in mammals
Andrew Nicholas Lopez (Eight): Characteristics of plant communities invaded by Dittrichia graveolens (Asteraceae), as it spreads away from roadsides in Santa Clara County
Erika Grace Strasburger (Crown): Constraining the Asymmetry of Type Ia Supernovae using Late-time Spectra
Dane Noelle Cross (Porter): Examining the Self Interaction of Dark Matter through Brightest Cluster Galaxy Offsets
Michael Gregory Scudder (Crown): Geochemical and Isotopic Evidence for the Escape of Ice Sheet Fluids
Carlos Eduardo Arevalo Rivas (Porter): Pan-Cancer Analysis of Driver Mutations and Modules in Cancer Genomes
Rodrigo Angulo (Crown): Unburned carbon in the Outer Layers of Type Ia Supernova Ejecta
Jose Elias Jobel (Oakes), Paige Marie Kelly (Porter): X-RAY-OPTICAL SCALING RELATIONS FOR THE DARK ENERGY SURVEY Y3 REDMAPPER CLUSTERS
Division of Social Sciences
*Cielo De La Rosa (Eight): Investigations on chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) termite-fishing cognition: Issa, western Tanzania
*Kimberly Paige Dare (Nine): Propelling UCSC Undergraduates of Color in Environmental Studies Through Mentorship
*Morgan Colleen Bishop (Oakes): The New Vagrancy: The Evolution of Moral Policing in Anti-Homeless Policy
Lauren Michiko Woo (Cowell): Consent as a Defense to Assault Charges: A BDSM Case Study
Sophie Marie Kennedy (Nine): Evaluation, Adherence, and Reporting: When, Why, and How College Students Support New Behavioral Norms During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Nivie Oron (Kresge): Fat as Flawless or Fatal? Weight Stigma and its Effect on Perceptions of Fat, Health, and Eating Disorders.
Chiara Marie Fishburne (Porter): Meanings of Magic: The Pickets and Undergraduate Participation
Aryan D'Rozario (Merrill): Pakistan's Military Legacies: Army, Nation, and State
Siena Jane Elvins (Ten): “Through the Dignity of Work”: The Tension Between Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony in the Remediation of Homelessness Taking Place in Santa Cruz, CA
