2024 Deans', Chancellor's and Steck Awards
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 the top three Deans' Awards projects in each academic division. Both awards recognize excellence in undergraduate research 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. The Steck Award is given to the most outstanding Chancellor's Award winning project.
The Chancellor's Awards Ceremony is available to watch here: https://vimeo.com/953660070
2024 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 Award are recognized as being one of the top 3 projects from each of the five Divisions. The winner of the Steck Family Award for outstanding research project will be denoted with an *.
Arts Division
Chancellor Award Winners
Kairo Chin (Porter): Clyde's
Kyla Perkins (Merrill): Theories on How to Decarcerate the Museum
Danny Moshayedi (Stevenson), Katherine Garcia De La Rosa (Kresge), Madeline Finkel (Kresge): Unforgettable Lies: Framing Jamie Snow
Dean's Award Winners
Zella Bonita Vacaron (Kresge): From Giving Violets to Gaining Visibility: Looking at Artwork by Self-Identified Lesbian Artists
Alice Barreras (Porter): Always Offer a Gift of Silver to the First Magpie Seen in Spring
Lily Mia Nash (Carson): Climate Grief Quilting Bee
Kasey Morales (Kresge): Fragmented Mind of the Torn Soul / Womanhood
Celeste Wilkinson (Merrill): Hybridity of Costume and the Development of Race: Conflicting Meanings within the Portrait of Don Francisco de Arobe and Sons Pedro and Domingo
Cecelia Selznick (Stevenson): Indigenous Land Politics: Artistic Resistance Presented by Zapatista Climate Justice
Chanel Chavira (Stevenson): The Reclamation of Hawaiian Featherwork: Exploring History and Tradition in Relation to the Present
Baskin School of Engineering
Chancellor Award Winners
Coen Adler (Crown): Fair Augmentation of Decision Trees Through Selective Node Retraining
Natalie Valett (Nine): Connectivity-Based Heuristic Algorithms for Restoration Prioritization
Danielle Haley (Porter): Structure and antigenicity of the porcine astrovirus 4 capsid spike
Dean's Award Winners
John Minnick (Carson): Automated tools for accurate and precise dosing of granular solids
Yuhao Chen (JR Lewis), Hanwen Yang (JR Lewis), Chloe Wong (JR Lewis), Juan Aguenza (Cowell), Sai Bhujangari (Cowell), Benthan Vu (Cowell): Assessing the Impact of Prompting Methods on ChatGPT’s Mathematical Capabilities
Luqman Zaceria (Cowell): Automatic Vectorization of Architectural Floor Plans
Siddarth Mamidanna (Crown), Shiyuan Huang (Merrill), Shreedhar Jangam (JR Lewis): Can Large Language Models Explain Themselves? A Study of LLM-Generated Self-Explanations
Akhil Gunasekaran (Crown): Knowledge Distillation Through Time For Future Event Prediction
Varun Kodur (Crown), Jordan Nichols (Stevenson), Allison Jaballas (Crown), Julia Saltz (Cowell), Nikita Rajesh (Crown), James Larbalestier (Kresge), Zokhira Mukhammadyunusova (JR Lewis), Tyler Gaw (Oakes), Srikar Bevara (JR Lewis), Mckenna Smith (Crown), Ashlyn Nhu-Ngoc Huynh (Nine), Blanca Gil (Merrill), Katherine Warren (Cowell), Daniel Li (Porter), Edgar D Cruz (Crown): TABI: Toxic Algal Bloom Interference
Ananthajit Srikanth (Nine), Chi Jasmine Tai (JR Lewis): Embers, Wind, and Fire: An investigation of the effects of embers and wind on wildfire propagation
Humanities Division
Chancellor Award Winners
Jacob Press (Stevenson): “You Just Take It For Granted When You're Growing Up”: Filipino Cockfighting in the Pajaro Valley
Ian Doyle (ihdoyle) (Oakes): Red Dawn Over Derry: A History of Socialist Republicanism and Radicalism in the Troubles
Ethan Waldo (ewaldo) (JR Lewis): Regulation of Prostitution in 19th Century Paris: Effects of Urbanization on Sexual Institutions
Dean's Award Winners
Jackson Young (Cowell), Isabel De Blois (Kresge), Valerie Sainz (Stevenson): A Night in Harlem: Mapping the Nightclubs of 1930's Harlem
Leonardo Colletta (Stevenson): Ireland As We Would Surely Have Her
Maia Mislang (Porter): Sex Work and Prostitution in the American-Occupied Philippines
Bronwyn Eyre (Stevenson): Silent Soldiers: Uncovering the Stories of Indigenous Nurses in the First World War
Molly Maher (Porter): Tensions in Paradise: The Om Commune as an Alternative Cultural Experiment
Lily Marx (Kresge): the earth as skin
Physical & Biological Sciences Division
Chancellor Award Winners
Aditi Gangadharan (Nine): Optics Testing for SCALES
Darshika Ravulapalli (Kresge): Adressing Discrepancies Within Emission-line Modeling Using a Machine Learning Approach
*Eva Zlimen (Carson): Extensive Ice Pollution of Uranus and Neptune's Atmospheres by Upsweep of Material During the Nice Model Migration
Dean's Award Winners
Alekhya Meduri (Crown): Equipped with a Cre-Dependent CRISPR-CAS9 System to Investigate Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in Bengalese Finch Models
Anna Voznyuk (Merrill): Biogeography and activity of cyanobacterial and non-cyanobacterial diazotrophs throughout the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre
Darian Mohsenin (Kresge): Mapping Cell-Type-Specific Gene Expression across the Developing Songbird Forebrain
Kathryn Echandia-Monroe (Nine): Comparative RNA sequencing analysis reveals KRAS A146P presence in rare form of Gliosarcoma
Keaton Ferguson (Crown): Accuracy of the disconnected bump scan conducted on ATLAS prototype pixel modules using the RD53a readout chip
Nitya Jain (Nine): Phylogenetic Analysis of Type II Toxin-Antitoxin Systems
Olivia Jackson (Carson): PIENU to PIONEER: Constraints on Rare Pion Decays in Search of Dark Sector Physics
Social Sciences Division
Chancellor Award Winners
Alexandra Singer (Nine): Repression and Mobilization in the Digital Age: a Triangular Set of Relations
Lila Bell (Kresge): Women Talking: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and the Requirements of Womanhood
*Ameyalli De La Rosa (Merrill): ¡El es Dios!: Mexican Folk Catholicism and its Rebellious Ecologies
Dean's Award Winners
Gerard Labriola (Merrill): Bringing Each Other to Greatness: Narratives of the Revolutionary Vanguard and Horizontal Alternatives in Zapatista Theory and Practice
Reva Samant (Merrill): Ending Solitary Confinement: A Look Outside the Eighth Amendment and Litigation
Diana Garcia (Merrill), Sydrah Al-Saegh (Cowell): Peer Relations and the Importance of Cultural Identity in Classroom Motivation
Shavit Melamed (Carson): Radio Activities: Extracurricular College Radio and Academic Success
Lauren Elscott (Carson): The Judicial Paintbrush: The Ongoing Evolution of Copyright Law and its Relationships with Creators, Corporations, and Artificial Intelligence
Kasey La (Merrill): What Was My Error?: Online Processing of Speech Disfluency by Foreign-Accented Speakers
