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Student Spotlights


2022-2023 Undergraduate Student Award Recipients

These awards serve as a way to honor our outstanding undergraduate student achievements. Congratulations to all of the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 awardees below!

ACSSA Research Poster Awards

  • Ethan Ashley (McHugh Lab) - Biochemistry Division 
  • Elanor Sievers (Debelouchina Lab) - Biochemistry Division
  • Reagan Beers (Sailor Lab) - Inorganic Division
  • Dylan Snelson (Theodorakis Lab) - Organic Division
  • Zachary Auvil (Continetti Lab) - Physical/Analytical Divison 
  • Karen Lopo Zepeda (Slade Lab) - Physical/Analytical Divison 

Mayer Award

  • Gordon Peiker 
  • Christopher Nowak 
  • Hans Ng
  • Marc Zepeda
  • Elanor Sievers 

Kamen Award

  • Jiwoo Kim 
  • Shane Douty

Urey Award

  • Thảo Bùi
  • Thi Xuan Nguyen
  • Oliver Sun
  • Lu Yue Wang
  • Eric Lu

Undergraduate Inclusive Excellence Awards

  • Molly Cohn (Marjorie Caserio Undergraduate Excellence Award)
  • Sophie Nguyen (Katja Lindenberg Undergraduate Excellence Award)
  • Minh Le (Roger Tsien Undergraduate Excellence Award)
  • Katherine Tang (Marye Anne Fox Undergraduate Excellence Award)
  • Annika So (Mario Molina Undergraduate Excellence Award)
  • Arshan Ommid (Joe Watson Undergraduate Excellence Award)

Charles L. Perrin Summer Research Fellowship

  • Tyler Lam (Tor Lab)
  • Khoa Tran (McHugh Lab)

Chemistry & Biochemistry Summer Student Fellowship

  • Natacha Oget (Schimpf Lab)
  • Katherine O'Shea (Budin Lab)

Physical Sciences Dean's Undergraduate Award for Excellence

  • Hao Wei

  • Manasi Movva

  • Zachary Auvil

  • Annika So

  • Cynthia Rong

  • Vicente Galicia

  • Jillian Hirano

  • Yuting Shen

  • Clarisa Bautista

  • Daniel Liu

  • Aman Shihora

  • Maxwell Varley

  • Khoa Tran

  • Madeline Brown 

Silagi Award

  • Dina Chehada

ACS Undergraduate Awards

  • Oliver Sun (Physical; Yuen-Zhou Lab)
  • Shane Douty (Organic; Ferguson Lab)

Undergraduate Student Award Descriptions

Undergraduate-student-achievments.jpg

 The 2022 deadline has passed for all awards above and below. We welcome you to apply next year!

Additional Awards:

 

Chemistry and Biochemistry Summer Research Fellowship

This merit-based fellowship recognizes students who show promise as future scientists through their participation in undergraduate chemistry research at UC San Diego. The fellowship ($1,000 award per student) is intended to provide support for the continuation of their research in summer under the mentorship of a Chemistry professor. (Time commitment will be based on mutual agreement with the faculty mentor.)

Undergraduate Inclusive Excellence Awards

These new awards are named after our renowned emeritus faculty: Marjorie Caserio, Marye Anne Fox, Katja Lindenberg, Mario Molina, Roger Tsien, and Joe Watson. These awards recognize undergraduate students who have demonstrated superior academic accomplishments and demonstrate dedication to advancing the professional community, through community involvement, leadership, overcoming adversity, and/or research achievements. Each student selected to receive one of these awards will be awarded $200 to their student account.

The American Institute of Chemists (AIC) Student Award Program

The AIC hosts an annual Student Awards program to honor outstanding senior students. Awardees will be chosen based on a demonstrated record of leadership ability, character, scholastic achievement, and advancement potential in the chemical professions. Students are invited to self-nominate or nominate a peer. Nominees must be a major from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry with Senior status.

Past Recipients

Past Awards

ACSSA Research Poster Awards

2021 (Poster): Christopher Nowak, Nicole Nolan, Minh Le, Elanor Sievers, Amalia Villagran-Suarez

2020 (Poster): Jori Mills, Kendrick Nguyen, Ningkai Zheng, Kien Malarney, Reece JamesGordon Peiker 

2019 (Poster): Riddhi Ananth, David Callahan, Andrea Gonzalez, Aurora Guild, Christine Lee, Debbie Zhuang

2018 (Poster): Jacob Hawver Pachter, Gavin Heim, Qin Li, Laura Williamson

2015 (Oral): Ryan Davis, Christina Jayson, Eric Kircher, Phuc Nguyen, Michael Shenk

2015 (Poster): Jennifer Bowen, Christopher coyle, Samantha Freitag, Cassandra Gilmour, Kelsey Krug, Beatriz Lopez-Bermudez, Megan Murphy, Sean Najjar, Wiberth Narvaez, Jennifer Ngo

Kamen Award 

2021: Tommy Le

2020: Leah Grayson, Kailash Venkatraman 

2019: Yueyi Chen, Nicholas Tu 

2018: Yook May Amelia Woo, Tian May Zeng, Dylan Power

2017: Kyle Balucana, Yoyo Wang

Mayer Award

2021: Calvin Huang, Amalia Villagran-Suarez

2020: Duyen Dang, Heidi Busse, Kun Yong Jeoung, Tongshan Liu, Seth Vigneron, Megan Young, Laura Williamson, Riddhi Ananth

2019: Haotian Chen, Andrew Mitchell, Richard Niederecker, Yifan Wu

2018Dylan Power

2017: Alexandre Vincent, Clark Wang, Jessie Davis, Luke Kisaichi, Tiffany Chen

2016: Kelsey Ann Krug, David Stephen Robert, Hao Zheng

2014: Kuei-Lin Chang, Kevin Pham

2013: Saajan Bhakta, Jake Boissonnault

2012: Patrick Smith

2011: Nathan Hendricks

Urey Award

2021: Serena Huang, Julie Thanh Huynh, Nhuan Duc Vu, Ella Lee, Xuanhe Jiang, Adrian Jordi De Almenara, Helen Than, Sara Rew, Siavash Moghadami 

2020: Andrew Mitchell​, Cornelius Smith​, Sarah Schwab, Teffanie Yu Ling Goh​, Roghiye Kazimi​, Ryan Helsel

2019: Melinda Chan, Peter Glatt

2018: Nicholas Checchia, Andrew Dang, Xiangyi Ke, Sijing Meng

2017: Ashley Hua Yee Chong

2016: Joshua Lee Cox, Connor Masao, Nam Thanh Trinh, Shane Christopher Williams

2014: Russell Lewis, Cydnee Ng, Dennis Tran, Krystine Vuong

2013: Pei-Ling Wu, Jung Hoon Park, Shiteng Duan, Alexander Ying Kit, Kevin Bao

2012: Kayla Nicole Busby, Stephan Sheung-Ming Leung

2011: Brittany Michel, Sihui Ma, Julia Stauber

Perrin Summer Fellowship Award

2021: Minh Le, Andrew Villanueva

2020: Tiffany Hamilton, Kien Malarney 

2019: Mingzhi Xu, Shenghua Yang

2018: Kaleb Barber, Yifan Wu

2016: Maher Alhaja, David Stephen Roberts

2014:
 Carolyn White, Megan Rooney

Silagi Award

2022: Francis Alipranti

2020: Sarah Schwab

Physical Sciences Dean's Undergraduate Award for Excellence

2022: Francis Alipranti, Reagan Beers, Mark Glossbrenner, Grace Lee, Olivia Modi, Christopher Nowak, Gordon Peiker, Jessica Raygoza, Elanor Sievers

2021: Alberto Castanedo, Andres De la Rosa, Calvin Huang, Tommy Le, Alina Luk, Jori Mills, Anthony Rodriguez, Sarah Schwab, Oliver Sun, Vanessa Tian, Nga (Swan) Van, Amalia Villagran-Suarez

2020: Duyen Dang, Joseph Hunter, Courtney Jang, Emily Lara, Kristine Luong, Kailash Venkatraman, Dalida Warda, Laura Williamson, Shenghua Yang, Riddhi Ananth, Megan Youn