Outstanding student scholarship highlighted at annual awards ceremony
May 18, 2025
On May 18, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences held its annual Convocation Ceremony at the Yale University Art Gallery.
Graduating students were recognized with academic prizes for outstanding achievement, including academic awards by department and two University awards.
“To receive a graduate degree from Yale is no small feat, and these award winners have gone above and beyond to truly push the boundaries of scholarship in their fields. They epitomize what it means to be a scholar,” said GSAS Dean Lynn Cooley in her remarks.
History PhD student Emily Yankowitz received three awards for her dissertation, which examined the nature of U.S. citizenship before it was defined by the Fourteenth Amendment. Yankowitz was recognized with the George Washington Egleston Historical Prize and the Edwin W. Small Prize—both of which recognize outstanding work in the field of American history—and the John Addison Porter Prize, considered to be one of the university’s most prestigious awards.
Michael Grunst, a PhD student in Microbiology, also received the Porter Prize for his dissertation on viral Spike proteins.
Matthew Dudley, a PhD student in History, received the Theron Rockwell Field Prize for his dissertation, “Into the Anti-Archives: Jewish Law, Ottoman Imperial Administration, and the Early Modern Cairo Geniza.”
In addition to the academic prizes, the ceremony also recognized the graduating winners of the GSAS Prize Teaching Fellowship. Each year, undergraduates recognize their most talented teaching fellows by nominating them for the fellowship. The students honored at the May 18 ceremony included past and current recipients of this coveted award, including Camille Angelo, Emily Cox, Jungmin Eun, William Frazer, Charles Troup, Sidharth Tyagi, and Kimberly Wong.
The ceremony concluded by highlighting four recipients of the Graduate Mentor Awards, which honor one faculty member from each academic division for exemplary teaching and mentoring of graduate students. The 2025 recipients include Andrew Wang, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine (Rheumatology); Moira Fradinger, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature; David Moore, Associate Professor of Physics; and Rourke O’Brien, Associate Professor of Sociology.
View the full list of GSAS academic prize winners in the 2025 Convocation Ceremony Program.