Guggenheim Fellows, Women in Cancer Research Award, and More Honors

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 21 to April 24, 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.

INSTITUTIONAL

Hashim M. Al-Hashimi, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics; Howard W. French, Professor of Journalism; and Michael I. Weinstein, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Mathematics, have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joining some of the world’s most accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities, and the arts in one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies.

Nina Berman, Professor of Journalism; Kellen Funk, Michael E. Patterson Professor of Law; Harrison Hong, John R. Eckel, Jr. Professor of Financial Economics; and John Ma, Professor of Classics and Chair of the Classics Department, have been awarded 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships.

FACULTY

ARTS & HUMANITIES

Nicholas Dames, Theodore Kahan Professor of Humanities, has won the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates. He will receive the award on May 31, 2025, at Faculty House.

Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Humanities category. He is described by the committee as a “humanistic intellectual,” whose trailblazing work addresses a broad spectrum of the core questions of our time.

Debashree Mukherjee, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, has received a 2025 American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for her project, “Tropical Machines: A Decolonial History of Media and Modernity.”

Kim Phillips-Fein, Robert Gardiner-Kenneth T. Jackson Professor of History, has won the 2025 Fiorello LaGuardia Book Prize for her book, Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics.

Yannik Thiem, Associate Professor of Religion, has received an A&S Faculty Recognition Award. He is being honored for Community Building and Engagement in the Humanities.

MEDICINE & SCIENCE

Marcel Agüeros, Professor of Astronomy, was elected President of the American Astronomical Society.

Eight Columbia faculty and researchers were named Honorary Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the world’s largest general scientific societies, and publisher of the Science family of journals. The Columbia honorees are Scott Banta, Professor of Chemical Engineering; Uttiya Basu, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology; Kiros Berhane, Cynthia and Robert Citrone-Roslyn and Leslie Goldstein Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics; Sabrina Diano, Robert R. Williams Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Institute of Human Nutrition; Jean Gautier, Professor of Genetics and Development in the Institute for Cancer Genetics; Robert Klitzman, Professor of Psychiatry; Jason Nieh, Professor of Computer Science; and Daniel Wolf Savin, Senior Research Scientist in the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory.

Kiros Berhane, Cynthia and Robert Citrone-Roslyn and Leslie Goldstein Professor of Biostatistics, was elected to the International Statistical Institute.

Gustaaf Brooijmans, John Parsons, and Michael Tuts, all Professors of Physics, were among the scientists awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for experimental collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Moise Desvarieux, Associate Professor of Epidemiology; George Hripcsak, Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor of Biomedical Informatics; and Richard Paul Mayeux, Gertrude H. Sergievsky Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Epidemiology, received a grant of $5,387,159 over one year from the National Institute on Aging for the project “Multi-morbidity 3-City Alzheimer’s Disease EHR Study (M3AD Study).”

Sabrina Diano, Robert R. Williams Professor of Nutrition and Director of the Institute of Human Nutrition, was elected to the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.

Iva Greenwald, Da Costa Professor of Biology in the Department of Biological Sciences and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and Gary Struhl, Herbert and Florence Irving Professor at the Zuckerman Institute and Professor of Genetics and Development at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, were awarded the Canada Gairdner International Award for research that helped yield critical insights on how cells communicate with their neighbors during animal development.

X. Shawn Liu, Joan and Paul Marks, MD '49 Assistant Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, and Maria Antonietta Tosches, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, were awarded the “MIND” Prize (Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery). Through the prize, the Pershing Square Foundation strives to change the paradigm of neuroscience research by creating a community of next-frontier thinkers who can uncover a deeper understanding of the brain and cognition.

ENGINEERING

Tal Danino, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Kristin Myers, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, have been inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows. AIMBE recognizes excellence, advances public understanding, and accelerates innovation in medical and biological engineering.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Merit Janow, Dean Emerita of Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, and Professor of Practice in International Economic Law and International Affairs, received the Foreign Policy Association Medal, which is the highest honor bestowed by the FPA, recognizing individuals who demonstrate responsible internationalism and work to expand public knowledge of international affairs.

Camille Pannu, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, was named the 2025 Hartje Clinical Scholar-in-Residence by University of Denver Sturm College of Law's clinical faculty. The program honors a clinical professor for pathbreaking scholarship and pedagogy.

Kate Redburn, Academic Fellow and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, received the Emerging Scholar of the Year Award from The Yale Law Journal.

Michael Woodford, John Bates Clark Professor of Political Economy, was awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management. He was recognized for “profoundly influencing modern macroeconomic analysis by establishing rigorous foundations for the study of business cycle fluctuations.”

POSTDOCS & STUDENTS

Gabriela Amaral Lis (SSW'26) presented a poster session at the Undergraduate Program Directors Conference in Las Vegas, NV, and was selected by the National Association of Social Workers-NYS Chapter as MSW Student of the Year.

Ardaschir Arguelles (CC’24) has been named a John & Daria Barry Scholar. The Barry Scholarship, funded by the John and Daria Barry Foundation, is an annual academic prize that provides funding for graduate study, including living, travel, and research expenses, at the University of Oxford for at least two years.

Willa Mihalyi-Koch, Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Chemistry, was named to the 2025 class of Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellows. The fellowship provides salary and research support to postdoctoral scholars with the highest potential for success in an independent academic career in the chemical sciences.

Nadja Zhakula-Kostadinova, PhD Candidate in the Department of Genetics and Development, won a Scholar in Training Award and a Women in Cancer Research Scholar Award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) for her research on novel metabolism-associated therapeutics for squamous cell cancers.