Annual Graduate Awards

Kassel Franco Garibay

Alumni Association's Dean's Choice Award for Leadership

Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies

Kassel Garibay is a PhD candidate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research is focused around social movements in Latin America, particularly Mexican feminist and lesbian activism. She is interested in friendship, solidarity, and coalition in the archives and contemporary movements.

Dissertation Title: "Faltan mis amigues: The politics of friendship, memory, and erasure in Mexican feminist & lesbian activism"

Valentina Pucci

Alumni Association Doctoral Summer Fellowship

Hispanic Languages and Literatures

Valentina Pucci is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University. Her dissertation examines queer dissidence and authorship in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Argentine literature, drawing on archival research at the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, and Princeton University Library. She is advised by Professor Joseph Pierce.

Dissertation Title: "Oblique Subjects: Performative Politics of Sexual Dissidence in Argentine Literature, 1940–present"

Lisa Diedrich

Dean's Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring by a Faculty Member

Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies

Lisa Diedrich is professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is the author of three books: Illness Politics and Hashtag Activism, Indirect Action, and Treatments. She is also co-editor (with Briana Martino) of the recent collection Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine.

Arianna Maffei

Dean's Award for Excellence in Service as a Graduate Program Director

Neurobiology & Behavior/Neuroscience

Arianna Maffei is a Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior and director of the Program in Neuroscience. She obtained her PhD in Physiology and Biophysics from the University of Pavia (Italy), then continued her training at Brandeis University. Her research focuses on the plasticity of neural circuits for taste.

Tara Powers

Dean's Award for Excellence in Service by a Graduate Program Coordinator

Anthropology/Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences (IDPAS)

I am the Academic Programs Coordinator in the Department of Anthropology. I provide administrative and advising support to our undergraduate anthropology major and minors, as well as our master’s and Ph.D. students. I’ve been in this role since 2015 and can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed every minute!

Rebecca (Becca) Osborn

Dorothy G. Pieper Award

Art

Becca Osborn (she/they) uses ceramics to explore grief and loss as a realm. They use otherworldly plant life inspired from the bog to depict the communal and individual journeys of grief and loss and their strange connection to hope and joy.

Dissertation Title: "Ripple"

Danielle Henneborn

Dorothy G. Pieper Award Honorable Mention

Studio Art

Danielle Henneborn is a multidisciplinary artist. She's fascinated by the wildlife of local suburbia and beyond. Animals that are often overlooked and misunderstood raise further existential questions concerning purpose and self.

Dissertation Title: "Dog Pile"

Yulong Hu

Faculty-Staff Dissertation Fellowship Award

Art History and Criticism

Yulong Hu is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History and Criticism. Her research focuses on contemporary Chinese art, media art, art education, and popular culture. She examines Chinese media art in the global context while exploring emergent forms of artistic production and their impact on the ever-changing audiovisual landscape.

Dissertation Title: "Reframing Chinese Media Art Education: Postself, City-as-Exhibitionscape, and the Digital Oral History Archive"

Samuel Lavin

Faculty-Staff Dissertation Fellowship Award

Ecology and Evolution

Samuel Lavin is a fourth year Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, working with Dr. Tara Smiley. Sam’s research focuses on the ecology and evolutionary patterns of both modern and fossil rodents in eastern Africa. Sam conducts fieldwork in Kenya’s Turkana Basin with the Turkana Basin Institute.

Dissertation Title: "Uncovering the Patterns and Processes of Rodent Diversification in Eastern Africa"

Emillion Adekoya

Joyce Turner Dissertation Fellowship Award

Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies

Emillion Adekoya is a PhD Candidate at Stony Brook University, New York. Her research is at the intersection of anti-Black surveillance in mobility, LGBTQ migration and asylum, transnational queer politics, and African sexuality studies. In her work, she interrogates and questions issues of immigration inequality, anti-Blackness, rights, and access, particularly for African and Afro-Caribbean LGBTQ+ immigrants and asylum seekers in the United States. Her research has been published in the Journal of Social Media & Society and Frontiers.

Dissertation Title: "The Racialization of Asylum: African and Afro-Caribbean LGBTQ+ Asylum Seekers Navigating Racialized Surveillance and Belonging in the United States"

Rupert Ikeh

Mildred and Herbert Weisinger Dissertation Fellowship

Ecology and Evolution

Rupert Ikeh is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Ecology and Evolution. His research explores biogeochemistry, bioturbation, and microbial ecology in salt marshes on Long Island’s North Shore, focusing on how nitrogen and bioturbation influence decomposition and greenhouse gas emissions, with implications for climate change and sea-level rise.

Dissertation Title: "The Effect of Fiddler Crab burrowing and Nitrogen levels on Decomposition and Greenhouse gas emission across Long Island Salt marshes"

Darya Likhacheva

President's Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student

Psychology

Darya Likhacheva is a PhD candidate in Social & Health Psychology. Her research examines the interconnections among stress, emotion regulation, and social support, and how they shape health. She is passionate about teaching and mentoring, building supportive relationships with students, and adapting her approach to meet diverse learning needs.

Dissertation Title: "Mapping Intrapersonal Emotion Regulation Strategies onto Interpersonal Partner Selection: The Role of Emotion Intensity, Temporal Context, and Shared Experiences"

Maria Elizabeth Garza

President's Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student

Linguistics

Elizabeth Garza is a PhD candidate in linguistics at Stony Brook University studying under Lori Repetti. Her research examines segmental displacement in Spanish dialects and its implications for morphology, phonology, and syntax. She also works in multilingual assessment development and has extensive experience teaching linguistics, writing, and English Language Arts.

Daphne Hudson

President's Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student

Anthropology/Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences (IDPAS)

Kassel Garibay is a PhD candidate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research is focused around social movements in Latin America, particularly Mexican feminist and lesbian activism. She is interested in friendship, solidarity, and coalition in the archives and contemporary movements.

Dissertation Title: "Faltan mis amigues: The politics of friendship, memory, and erasure in Mexican feminist & lesbian activism"

Sondra Charbadze

President's Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student

Philosophy

Sondra Charbadze is a fourth-year Ph.D. student studying phenomenology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of technology, with the goal of developing embodied, participatory methodologies for the human sciences. She loves teaching students how to apply philosophical thinking to the pressing problems and questions that they are living through.

Dissertation Title: "Science Beyond Spectatorship: Performative Phenomenology as Experimental Science"

Hayden Cuttone

President's Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student

Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies

Hayden Cuttone is a 4th year PhD candidate in the department of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. His research sits at the intersection of Feminist Literary and Cultural Studies, examining how people of marginalized genders use the horror genre to foster community in response to political crises.

Dissertation Title: "Transgender Horror Literature and the Cultural Production of Precarity: Toward an Applied Theory of Trans Affective Commons"

Megan Wyatt

President's Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student

Ecology and Evolution

Megan Wyatt is a PhD Candidate in Ecology and Evolution whose research bridges ecology, evolution, and paleontology to investigate how ecological diversity is generated and maintained. As an instructor and teaching assistant in biology, she strives to create active, inclusive classrooms centered on discovery, where students connect biological concepts to the natural world.

Dissertation Title: "Ecomorphological Diversity in Heteromyidae: A Macroecological, Macroevolutionary, and Deep Time Perspective"

Sai Aishwarya Abasolo

President's Award to Distinguished Doctoral Students

Biomedical Engineering

Sai Abasolo recently defended her dissertation in Biomedical Engineering. Her research focuses on developing organoids that mimic woven bone by guiding stem cell growth/differentiation. This work has potential applications in drug testing, bone biology studies, and regenerative implants for bone repair.

Dissertation Title: "Woven Bone-Mimicking Organoids as a Preclinical Platform and Therapeutic Construct for Bone Repair"

Meroona Gopang

President's Award to Distinguished Doctoral Students

Public Health

Meroona Gopang is a Fulbright doctoral candidate in Population Health and Clinical Outcomes Research at Stony Brook University, specializing in environmental epidemiology. Her research examines metal exposures and their associations with cardiovascular disease and cognitive health outcomes, with the goal of informing policy that protects the health of communities most affected by environmental exposures.

Dissertation Title: "Urine Metals: Biomarker Refinement and Studies of Cardiovascular Disease
and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementia (ADRD)"

Varun Kankanallu

President's Award to Distinguished Doctoral Students

Chemical and Molecular Engineering

Varun Kankanallu defended his Ph.D. in Chemical and Molecular Engineering from Stony Brook University, where he studied reaction mechanisms in earth-abundant battery materials. His research revealed hidden transformations, structure-property relationships, and morphological evolution, advancing the design of safer, better-performing batteries.

Dissertation Title: "Elucidating reaction mechanism of aqueous Zn||MnO2 batteries using multimodal synchrotron X-ray characterization"

Spencer Cattalani

President's Award to Distinguished Doctoral Students

Mathematics

Spencer Cattalani is a PhD candidate in the Department of Mathematics. He studies symplectic geometry, with a focus on generalizations of pseudoholomorphic curves.

Dissertation Title: "Complex Cycles and Symplectic Geometry"

Cuilee Sha

President's Award to Distinguished Doctoral Students

Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology

Cuilee Sha is an MD/PhD candidate in the Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology graduate program. She studies necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a devastating gastrointestinal disease that affects premature neonates. Her dissertation research specifically focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms connecting NEC with its long-term neurological consequences.

Dissertation Title: "Necrotizing Enterocolitis and Neurodevelopmental Impairments"

Han Li

Stony Brook Foundation Board of Trustees Dissertation Completion Endowed Fellowship

Linguistics

Han Li is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at Stony Brook University. Her research examines how people learn sound patterns, especially tone and intonation, from limited data. She builds simple, interpretable models to better understand language and support low-resource and underrepresented languages.

Dissertation Title: "Learning Tonal Patterns"

Samuel Espíndola Hernández

Stony Brook Foundation Board of Trustees Dissertation Completion Endowed Fellowship

Hispanic Languages and Literature

Samuel Espíndola-Hernández is a writer and PhD candidate in Hispanic Literature at Stony Brook University, specializing in interdisciplinary studies, 20th and 21st century Latin American art and poetry, and environmental humanities. His research traces the uses and representation of ashes as allegories of political and environmental violence.

Dissertation Title: "The Pathos of Ashes: Memory, Matter, And Ecological Art In Latin America"

AJ Castle

Stony Brook Foundation Board of Trustees Dissertation Completion Endowed Fellowship

Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies

AJ Castle is a PhD candidate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research is located at the intersection of the sciences and humanities. He studies human bodily processes, biological phenomena, and the approaches by which bodies are depicted in film and visual media.

Dissertation Title: "Dis/assembled Embodiment: Flesh, Form, Film, and the Visceral-Visual Body"

Alex Chege

Stony Brook Foundation Board of Trustees Dissertation Completion Endowed Fellowship

Ecology and Evolution

Alex is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolution. His research combines behavioral studies of nonhuman primates in Kenya’s Lamu Archipelago with GPS telemetry and modeling to examine primate adaptation to and navigation of coastal landscapes, with broader implications for early human dispersal along coastlines.

Dissertation Title: "Venturing along the shore: Nonhuman primate foraging strategies and patterns of space use in coastal landscapes"

Hao Lin

Stony Brook Foundation Board of Trustees Dissertation Completion Endowed Fellowship

Sociology

Hao is a PhD candidate in Sociology and is also affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Computational Science. Her research focuses on applying computational methods to the social sciences and examining the social impacts of AI.

Dissertation Title: "The Social Turn in Artificial Intelligence Research as a Scientific and Intellectual Movement"