MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’, ‘Best Invention of 2025’, Légion d’Honneur, and More Accolades for Columbians

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 Sept. 18 to Oct. 15, 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. 

FACULTY

ARTS & HUMANITIES

László Krasznahorkai was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in literature. Krasznahorkai was the Spring of 2014 Writer in Residence at the Harriman Institute, where he taught the seminar “Artistic Collaboration in East Central Europe.”

James Stafford, Assistant Professor of History, was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

MEDICINE & SCIENCE

Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, received an NIH Director’s ­Pioneer Award from the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program. The award challenges investigators at all career levels to pursue new research directions and develop groundbreaking, high-impact approaches to a broad area of biomedical or behavioral science.

Mustafa Aydogan, Assistant Professor of Genetics and Development at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and Vikram Gadagkar, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Principal Investigator at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, were named 2025 Freeman Hrabowski Scholars for outstanding early-career faculty who have the potential to become leaders in their research fields and to create lab environments in which everyone can thrive.

Edward R. Cook, Ewing Lamont Research Professor, Biology and Paleo Environment at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, received the Roger Revelle Medal from the American Geophysical Union for outstanding contributions in climate science.

Kristina G. Douglass, Associate Professor of Climate at Columbia Climate School, was named one of 22 MacArthur Fellows for 2025. The honor, often called a “genius grant", recognizes exceptional creativity and dedication across disciplines and includes an $800,000 no-strings-attached stipend.

Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics and Political Science, received an Association of American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) for Active Statistics, a book he co-authored with Aki Vehtari.

433 Columbia scientists were included in Stanford/Elsevier's "World's Top 2% Scientists Network," which ranks researchers within the top two percent or above based on their c-score. This c-score is calculated using standardized data on citations, h-index, and other indicators. Two Columbia scientists ranked in the top 100: Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics and Political Science, and Brent Stockwell, Professor and Chair of Biological Sciences.

Folarin Kolawole, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seismology, Geology, and Tectonophysics at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, received the Jason Morgan Early Career Award from the American Geophysical Union for outstanding and significant contributions to tectonophysics through a combination of research, education, and outreach activities.

David Rosner, Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor Emeritus of Sociomedical Sciences and Professor Emeritus of History in Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Mailman School of Public Health, and Gerald Markowitz were announced as co-winners of the eleventh annual Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award for their book Building the Worlds That Kill Us: Disease, Death, and Inequality in American History.

Michel Sadelain, Director of the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy, was awarded an inaugural Broermann Medical Innovation Award for his groundbreaking research in the field of CAR-T cell therapy for cancer.

Mehtaab Sawhney, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, was awarded a 2025 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Fellows receive a grant of $875,000 over five years to pursue their research.  

Zev Williams, Director of the Columbia University Fertility Center, and his research team’s STAR (Sperm Tracking and Recovery) Method, which detects and isolates the viable sperm for use in IVF, was named as one of TIME magazine’s Best Inventions of 2025.

ENGINEERING

Soulaymane Kachani, Senior Vice Provost at Columbia University and Professor at Columbia Engineering, was named a Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d’Honneur, the highest French distinction for military and civil accomplishment. 

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Wojciech Kopczuk, Professor of Economics, was elected an Honorary President of the International Institute of Public Finance.

Tey Meadow, Associate Professor of Sociology, received the 2025 Robin M. Williams Distinguished Lecture Award from the Eastern Sociological Society. Meadow, along with co-author Katharine Khanna (GSAS’23 PhD), also received the ASA Section on the Sociology of Sex and Gender’s Distinguished Article Award for their article, "The Fragile Male: An Experimental Study of Transgender Classification and the Durability of Gender Categories."

Rosalind Morris, Professor of Anthropology, was announced as co-winner of the eleventh annual Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award for her book Unstable Ground: The Lives, Deaths, and Afterlives of Gold in South Africa.

Adam Reich, Professor of Sociology, was nominated by the Honor Society of the School of General Studies to receive the GS Honor Society Faculty Award. This award was created in 2025 to honor faculty members whose exceptional teaching, mentorship, and dedication have profoundly inspired and supported Columbia School of General Studies students in their pursuit of academic excellence. 

Marissa E. Thompson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, is a co-winner of the Sociology of Education Association's 2025 Best Post-PhD Paper Award for her journal article, "The Effect of Academic Outcomes, Equity, and Student Demographics on Parental Preferences for Schools: Evidence from a Survey Experiment," published in Social Forces.

Andreas Wimmer, Lieber Professor of Sociology and Political Philosophy, with co-authors Jack LaViolette, PhD candidate, and Seungwon Lee, PhD candidate, are co-winners of the 2025 Charles Tilly Best Article Award from the Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. The award recognizes their article, "Diffusion Through Multiple Domains: The Spread of Romantic Nationalism Across Europe, 1770–1930," published in the American Journal of Sociology. 

POSTDOCS & STUDENTS

Aishworya Shrestha, PhD student at Columbia School of Social Work, was honored with a Beautiful Voices Award by Estée Lauder and Vital Voices as one of six extraordinary women driving bold solutions for social change worldwide. Shrestha is the co-founder of Heart of Nepal.

Zefan Wang (SOA’25) won a 2025 Student Academy Award in the Narrative Category for his short film, Kubrick, Like I Love You.