Golden Globe Winners, Schwarzman Scholars, Presidential Citizens Medal, and More

From science to engineering, writing to social sciences, here are the Columbians who received awards recently.

January 23, 2025

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 December 19, 2024 to January 23, 2025.

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's Center for Veteran Transition and Integration (CVTI) was recognized for its steadfast commitment to veterans by Student Veterans of America (SVA) and honored with the William Pearson Tolley Champion for Veterans in Higher Education Award.

Columbia Health's question and answer website, Go Ask Alice!, won Gold in the DANDA Awards, which honor the best design and aesthetics for digital and physical/print-based media produced for the healthcare industry.

FACULTY

ARTS & HUMANITIES

Kalyani Ramnath, Assistant Professor in the History Department, received the 2024 Distinguished Book Award from the Asian Law and Society Association for her book, Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia.

Karen Van Dyck, Kimon A. Doukas Professor of Modern Greek Language and Literature, Classics Department, was awarded Honorary Citizenship in the Republic of Greece.

MEDICINE, SCIENCE, & ENGINEERING

For the third year running, Columbia University School of Nursing has ranked #1 among all U.S. nursing schools in National Institutes of Health research funding. In federal fiscal year 2024, Columbia investigators received 38 grants, totaling $21,860,338.

Agostino Capponi, Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, and Lorenzo Sironi, Associate Professor of Astronomy, were among the nearly 400 scientists and engineers who were awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers.

Milan Delor, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, received an NSF CAREER award for the project, “Realizing ultrahigh mobility semiconductors through light-matter interactions.”

Guohua Li, Mieczyslaw Finster Professor of Anesthesiology and Epidemiology, will represent the United States in the inaugural Poetry World Cup 2025, with his poem, “True Heart.” The poem that receives the most online readers by April 15 will win the competition.

W. Ian Lipkin, John Snow Professor of Epidemiology, was awarded the 2025 Distinguished Alumnus honor by the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.

Gary W. Miller, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, received a grant of $18,474,445 over three years from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health for “IndiPHARM: Individual Metabolome and Exposome Assessment for Pharmaceutical Optimization.”

Michel Sadelain, Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Medicine, received the King Faisal Prize in Medicine for his groundbreaking contributions to Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.

Rebecca Schnall, Mary Dickey Lindsay Professor of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and Dustin Duncan, Professor of Epidemiology, were awarded $7,420,722 over three years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for “Limited Interaction Efficacy Trial of MyPEEPS Mobile to Reduce HIV Incidence in Young Men who Have Sex with Men and Use of Targeted Geospatial Epidemiology (MyPEEPS Mobile-LITE).”

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Mabel Abraham, Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, received the Russell Sage Foundation’s Presidential Grant Award for her paper “Field Experimental Evidence of Racialized and Gendered Evaluations of Remote Work.”

Daniel Alarcón (CC’99), Associate Professor at Columbia Journalism School, won iHeart’s 2025 Innovator Award for his series The Good Whale (nominated for iHeart’s Podcast of the Year), which dives into the story of Keiko, the orca starring in the 1993 film Free Willy and his journey back to the wild.

Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History, was awarded the 2024 NIHU International Prize in Japanese Studies, recognizing a scholar based outside Japan who has made a significant contribution to the international development of Japanese studies.

Daniel Guetta, Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Business School, received the Prize for the Teaching of Operations Research and Management Science (OR/MS) Practice at INFORMS.

Gita Johar, Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Marketing Association, Consumer Behavior Special Interest Group (AMA CBSIG).

Yash Kanoria, Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, and Jacob Leshno, Assistant Professor at Columbia’s Economics Department, received the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize at INFORMS. The prize is awarded for the best contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English in the past five years.

Debra Ann Livingston, Paul J. Kellner Professor of Law, received the Stanley Fuld Award, the highest honor of the New York State Bar Association’s Commercial and Federal Litigation Section.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Professor of International and Public Affairs at SIPA, 67th Secretary of State, and former Senator for the State of New York, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her decades of public service. The award, which was bestowed by President Biden, is the highest honor given to civilians in the United States.

Daniel Russo, Philip H. Geier Jr. Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, received the APS Erlang Prize at INFORMS. The award honors early-career researchers for outstanding contributions to applied probability.

Thomas J. Vallely, Weatherhead East Asian Institute’s Senior Advisor for Vietnam, received the Presidential Citizens Medal, bestowed by President Biden, for “citizens of the United States of America who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”

STUDENTS, POSTDOCS, & ALUMNI

Kelsey Chin (BC'22, SIPA'23), Tianxin Li (TC'23), and Lochlan Zhang (GS'25) were named 2025-2026 Schwarzman Scholars to pursue a master’s program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, designed to build a global community of future leaders who will serve to deepen understanding between China and the rest of the world.

Eunho Cha, Jiwan Lee, and Stacie Tao, PhD candidates at Columbia School of Social Work, won the 2025 Student Award for Social Work Research, awarded by the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work for their publication, “Impact of the expanded child tax credit and its expiration on adult psychological well-being,” in Social Science & Medicine. The award is given to a doctoral student or a collaborative group of students whose published (or in press) scholarship advances scientific inquiry in social work or social welfare.

Danielle Mikaelian (CC'21) was the only law student nationwide to receive the 2025 Ms. JD Limitless Leadership Award, which celebrates women and organizations who demonstrate outstanding leadership, a spirit of excellence, innovative gender equity initiatives, and an unwavering commitment to empowering future generations of women lawyers.

Aishworya Shrestha, PhD student at Columbia School of Social Work, received First Prize in Globethics Youth Leadership Award 2024. The award was established in 2020 to “recognize, honor and empower young leaders from around the world striving for positive, ethical change in their community, institution, society, nation, region or even globally.”

STAFF

Bill Gaythwaite, Assistant Director for Special Populations at Columbia Law School, won the 2025 Drue Heinz Literary Prize for his collection of short stories, A Place in the World.

FILM & TELEVISION

At the 2025 Golden Globes, Justin Marks (CC'02) and Jonathan van Tulleken (SOA’10) won Best Television Series (Drama) for Shōgun, and Lucia Aniello (CC’04) won Best Television Series (Comedy or Musical) for Hacks. Check out the full list of Columbians whose projects were nominated.

At the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, James Mangold (SOA'99) will receive the Trailblazer Award in recognition for his dedication and achievements in cinema. Several other Columbians will also screen their films at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival: Ilan Amouyal (SOA'17), Sam Bisbee (CC ’90), Elegance Bratton (GS’14), Bill Condon (CC’76), Cherien Dabis (SOA’04), Erik Feig (CC’92), Arielle Friedman (GS), Daisy Friedman (BC), Saidiya Hartman, Irvin Hunt (GSAS’14), Dea Kulumbegashvili (SOA’18), Meera Menon (CC’06), Isaak Popkin (CC’24), Christopher Radcliff (SOA’09), Ira Sachs, James Schamus, Tony Yang (SOA’20).