Columbia Student Named 2024 U.S. Rhodes Scholar

Columbia News produces a monthly newsletter (subscribe here!) and article series featuring a roundup of awards and milestones that Columbia faculty, staff, and students have received in recent days. In this edition, you’ll find awards and milestones from October 26 to November 30, 2023. 

If you have an accomplishment you'd like to be considered for inclusion, please email [email protected] with your name, title, school, department, and a link to the relevant award or milestone. 

You can take a look at past accomplishments on our Awards & Milestones page. And you can subscribe to receive the newsletter in your inbox. 

INSTITUTIONAL

Columbia University’s new Business School buildings – Henry R. Kravis Hall and David Geffen Hall – received the 2023 Urban Land Institute New York (ULI NY) Award for Excellence in Institutional Development. The statewide competition recognizes projects that demonstrate commitment to planning, design, sustainability, and community impact.

FACULTY

The Office of the Provost recently announced the 2023-2024 cohort of the Provost's Senior Faculty Teaching Scholars: Peter Bearman (Sociology), Denise Cruz (English & Comparative Literature), Lila Davachi (Psychology), Karol DiBello (Nursing), Philip Genty (Law), Ari Goldman (Journalism), Paul Ingram (Business), Garud Iyengar (Engineering), and Monica Lypson (General Medicine). 

ARTS & HUMANITIES

Robert O’Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Andie Tucher, H. Gordon Garbedian Professor of Journalism, are co-winners of the 2023 Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award. O’Meally won for his book, Antagonistic Cooperation: Jazz, Collage, Fiction, and the Shaping of African American Culture. Tucher won for her book, Not Exactly Lying: Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History.

Lynn Nottage, School of the Arts Theatre professor, won the annual Monte Cristo Award from the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.

Carlos Alonso Nugent, professor of English and Comparative Literature, won the 2022 Annette Kolodny Prize, given by the Environmental Justice Caucus, for his paper, “Mescalero Apache Imagined Environments Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.”

Anthropology professors Lila Abu-Lughod, Jafari Allen, Alyssa Basmajian, Naveeda Khan, Munira Khayyat, Maya Mikdashi, and Nomi Stone all won awards at the 2023 American Anthropology Association annual meeting.

Economics Professor David Weinstein received the Order of the Rising Sun Award in recognition of his contributions to promoting academic exchange and mutual understanding between the U.S. and Japan.

MEDICINE & SCIENCE

Domenico Accili, Russell Berrie Foundation Professor of Diabetes (in Medicine), was awarded $7,402,545 over four years from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for "Columbia Diabetes Research Center."

Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, associate professor of Biological Sciences and principal investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, was awarded the Society for Neuroscience’s Young Investigator Award. The award recognizes the outstanding achievements and contributions of young neuroscientists who lead independent research groups. Tristan Geiller, associate research scientist in the Losonczy lab at Zuckerman, was awarded the Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award in Neuroscience, which recognizes young neuroscientists for outstanding research and educational pursuits in an international setting.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science has allocated supercomputer access to a record-breaking 75 computational science projects for 2024 through its Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program. The Columbia faculty who will serve as principal investigators and co-investigators on projects awarded access by the department include Mohammed AlQuraishi, assistant professor of Systems Biology (in Computer Science); Norman Christ, Ephraim Gildor Professor of Computational Theoretical Physics; Richard Friesner, William P. Schweitzer Professor of Chemistry; Jonathan Javitch, Lieber Professor of Experimental Therapeutics (in Psychiatry); Robert Mawhinney, dean of Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and David Reichman, Centennial Professor of Chemistry. 

Ali Gharavi, Jay Meltzer, M.D. professor of Nephrology and Hypertension (in Medicine), received the Homer W. Smith Award from the American Society of Nephrology.

Corina Lelutiu-Weinberger, associate professor of Health Sciences Research (in Nursing), was named a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Nancy Reame, Mary Dickey Lindsay Professor Emerita of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in the Faculty of Nursing, was appointed to the Medical Advisory Board of the National Menopause Foundation.

Aluem Tark, associate professor of Nursing and director of the Family Nurse Practitioner Program, was awarded the Distinguished Educator in Gerontological Nursing Award by the National Hartford Center of Gerontological Nursing Excellence.

Mary Beth Terry, professor of Epidemiology, and Jeanine Genkinger, associate professor of Epidemiology, were awarded $8,939,079 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for the "Breast Cancer Family Registry."

ENGINEERING

Computer Science professors Christos Papadimitriou and Mihalis Yannakakis received the John von Neumann Theory Prize for their research in computational complexity theory that explores the boundaries of efficiently solving decision and optimization problems crucial to operations research and management sciences.

Marco Giometto, assistant professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, has been awarded a Young Investigator Award by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Giometto’s research centers on the fundamental study of turbulence in the environment using highly scalable computational frameworks.

Mijo Simunovic, assistant professor of Chemical Engineering, was named to the New York Stem Cell Foundation’s 2023 class of NYSCF–Robertson Investigators. Simunovic is one of three recipients of the Robertson Stem Cell Investigator Award, which focuses on supporting outstanding scientists and researchers early in their careers. 

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia Journalism School, was recognized as the Hero of Morningside Heights by the West 111 St. Block Association for going beyond reporting and being "a profound interpreter of our personal and shared visions."

Lynnette Widder, professor of professional practice in the Sustainable Management program at  the School of Professional Studies, was awarded a 2023 Architecture + Design Independent Projects grant for her project, "Rogue Plants, Native Soils: Histories of Destruction and Its Opposites."

POSTDOCS, STUDENTS, & STAFF

Michael Levin, PhD candidate in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, and Maya Pincus, science communications officer for the U.S. Science Support Program at Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, were selected by the American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest earth and space sciences association, as part of the 2023-2024 cohort for Voices for Science. Voices for Science trains scientists to communicate the value and impact of Earth and space science to key decision makers, journalists, and public audiences.

Milenna van Dijk, postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychiatry, received the James Kirk Bernard Foundation Award for Excellence in the Biological Exploration of Suicide.

Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa (CC’24) has been named a 2024 U.S. Rhodes Scholar. She is among 32 Americans chosen for the prestigious scholarship, which provides funding for two or three years of postgraduate study at Oxford.