Goldwater Scholars, PEN/Nabokov Award, and More Accolades for Columbians
From science to writing to institutional milestones, here are the Columbians who received awards recently.
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 March 19 to April 15, 2026.
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 was named among Peace Corps’ 2026 Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities. During the past year, nine alumni served in seven countries around the world (Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, Kosovo, Mongolia, North Macedonia, and Peru).
FACULTY
ARTS & HUMANITIES
Elisheva Carlebach, Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society, has received two National Jewish Book Awards: the Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship, and the Barbara Dobkin Award for Women’s Studies, for her latest book, A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe, co-written with Debra Kaplan.
Edwidge Danticat, Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities, has been honored for career achievement by PEN America with the 2026 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.
Zosha Di Castri, Francis Goelet Associate Professor of Music Composition, and Corie Rose Soumah, PhD Student, had a world premiere at a Totem Paramirabo concert that won the Prix Opus “Concert of the Year, for Electroacoustic Music and Musiques Actuelle.”
Ofer Dynes, Leonard Kaye Assistant Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, Department of Slavic Languages, has won a 2025 Jordan Schnitzer First Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies for his forthcoming book, The Fiction of the State: The Partitions of Poland and the Beginning of Modern Jewish Literature.
Giuseppe Gerbino, Professor of Historical Musicology, has been elected a member of the Accademia dell’Arcadia in Rome. Founded in 1690, the Academy of Arcadia is one of Italy’s oldest scholarly and literary academies still active today.
Yike Li and Ling Yan, both Lecturers in Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, have been awarded the 2025 Teaching Innovation Award from the New England Chinese Language Teachers Association for their project, A Digital Learning Platform for First-Year Chinese Language. The project was commended for its innovative design, pedagogical depth, and impact on student learning.
Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, is the recipient of the 2026 Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Vanguard Award. The award is given annually to those who have made significant contributions to social justice and human rights.
Alison Vacca, Gevork M. Avedissian Associate Professor of Armenian History and Civilization, is the winner of a 2025 Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies from the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research for her book, An Armenian Futūh Narrative: Łewond’s Eighth-Century History of the Caliphate.
Benjamin VanWagoner, Lecturer in the Discipline of English and Comparative Literature, has been awarded the Renaissance Society of America’s inaugural First Book Prize, for his book, Imperial Ventures: Maritime Drama and the Invention of Risk.
Joseph Zeal-Henry, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, has been named Chief of Arts and Culture of the city of Boston.
MEDICINE & SCIENCE
George A. Bonanno, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Teachers College; Yiping W. Han, Professor of Microbial Sciences in Dental Medicine and Microbiology & Immunology; and Kevin Ochsner, Professor of Psychology, were named honorary fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the world’s largest general scientific societies.
Linda P. Fried, Dean Emerita of Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, was recognized by the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) with its highest honor, the Welch-Rose Award, for her transformational leadership in academic public health.
Zev Williams, Wendy D. Havens Associate Professor of Women’s Health, was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Health in 2026 by TIME Magazine.
Ming Yuan, Professor of Statistics, received the 2026 IMS Carver Medal from the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). He earned the award “for outstanding service to the IMS in multiple capacities, including serving as Co-Editor of The Annals of Statistics, IMS Program Secretary, member of numerous IMS committees, as well as for broad and sustained professional service to the statistical community.”
Maryam Zolnoori, Assistant Professor at Columbia Nursing, received $3,406,699 from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) approach for the early detection of cognitive decline in Black older adults.
SOCIAL SCIENCES
James Chu, Assistant Sociology Professor, has received a William T. Grant Scholars Program Award, which supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans by giving each scholar $425,000, including up to 7.5% indirect costs.
Five full-time faculty members at Columbia Law were recognized in the Top 100 Legal Scholars of 2025 list compiled by researchers from George Mason University: Lina Khan, Associate Professor of Law; Dorothy S. Lund, Columbia 1982 Alumna Professor of Law; Lev Menand, Associate Professor of Law; David Pozen, Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law; and Tim Wu, Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology.
Benjamin L. Liebman, Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Intellectual Life at Columbia Law School, and Zeming Liu (LAW’24) won the Senior Scholar Prize from the American Society of Comparative Law for their article, “Redefining Law in China.” The prize recognizes the best scholarly article published in a recent volume of the American Journal of Comparative Law.
POSTDOCS & STUDENTS
Alexandra Bradbury (SEAS’26) was awarded a Saint Andrew's Society of the State of New York Fellowship for American students to study in Scotland and for Scottish students to study in the U.S. to promote cultural interchange and goodwill between Scotland and the United States.
Tanmay Gupta (CC’27), Matthew Lee (CC’27), Felix Liu (CC’27), and Mallory Thomas (SEAS’27) were named 2026 Goldwater Scholars. The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue research careers in the fields of engineering, mathematics, and the natural sciences.
Amir Mason (CC’29) and Chaeeun Yoo (CC’29) were named 2026 Roosevelt Institute Forge Fellows to engage in foundational policy skills training and leadership development programming.
Andrew Weaver (CC’26) and Theodore Zaritsky (CC’26) were awarded the 2026-27 James C. Gaither Junior Fellowship through the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, supporting the institution’s mission of taking on the most difficult global problems and safeguarding peace.