News & Announcements

Each spring, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences recognizes professors from each of four divisions for their advising and mentoring of Yale students.

Eight PhD students from the Graduate School have been named Prize Teaching Fellows for the 2025-2026 academic year. The Prize Teaching Fellowship recognizes graduate students for their outstanding performance and promise as teachers. It is considered among the most important honors that Yale bestows upon graduate students.

Ruthie Block, a PhD candidate in English and Black Studies, Estelle Guéville, a PhD candidate in Medieval Studies, and Taylor Wilson Thompson, a PhD candidate in American Studies and Black Studies, were among the 50 fellows selected for this year’s cohort.

PhD student Andrew Verdesca and his colleagues have uncovered a surprising driver of aging in planarian flatworms: a gradual breakdown in the body’s “internal positional system.” Their findings—published in Current Biology—show that even organisms with constant cellular renewal can experience age-related decline when tissue organization drifts, offering a fresh angle on how aging might work across species.

The fellowship, awarded annually by the American Academy in Rome, supports innovative work in various disciplines across the arts and humanities. Tom Zhuohun Wang, a PhD student in the Departments of History and Classics, and Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra, a PhD student in the School of Architecture and the Department of Religious Studies, are among the 31 recipients of this year’s fellowship.

Read the latest news from the Graduate School in our April 2026 alumni newsletter.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Historic Milestones and Future Directions: Innovative Strategies to Empower the Next Generation of Scholars.” Attendees included students, faculty and administrators from 28 institutions across the country.

Cole Jensen, a PhD student in computational biology and bioinformatics, was recently awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) F31 grant. Jensen is a computational biologist with experience in epidemiology, statistics, and evolutionary biology. His research interests include developing computational, evolutionary, and graph-based methods to study B-cell biology.

During their three-day visit in March, the group held 82 meetings with Congressional staff, think tanks, agencies, and other key stakeholders. Among the concerns that the group addressed were the Scientific Integrity Act; funding for the physical sciences; protections for lab animals; and wildfire prevention.

The Graduate School will hold a Diploma Ceremony for its MA, MS, MPhil, and PhD degree recipients on Monday, May 18, at noon in Woolsey Hall. The ceremony will be livestreamed.