Millennium Fellows, Alexander Hamilton Medal, Building Design Triumphs, 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 June 25 to Aug. 26, 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

The 2026 Alexander Hamilton Medal will be awarded to Abby Black Elbaum (CC’92, BUS’94), a leading real estate executive who was recently named co-chair of the University Board of Trustees. Beyond her commitment to Columbia, Elbaum is also deeply engaged with healthcare and civic leadership.

611 W. 112th Street won Merit Awards in the Renovation/Restoration and Sustainability categories as part of ENR New York’s Best Projects Awards, which evaluates projects on how well they overcame challenges; contributed to the construction industry; and met safety, construction, and design quality milestones.

Columbia Li Lu Law Library and the University’s residence hall at 600 W. 125th Street have received LEED Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification is the foremost green building certification program that measures how sustainable a building is in areas including energy use, water efficiency, material selection, and indoor air quality. 

Columbia Li Lu Law Library also won an Interior Design Award in the Academic Libraries-Over 30,000 Square Feet category as part of the 10th Biennial American Library Association (ALA)/International Interior Design Association (IIDA) Library Interior Design Awards, which honors excellence and innovation in library interior design.

FACULTY

Three projects led by Columbia University professors have received Genesis Mission funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. The mission aims to integrate artificial intelligence into transformative scientific discovery, with the goal of doubling the productivity and impact of American science and engineering within a decade. Kyle Bishop, Professor of Chemical Engineering; Norman Christ, Ephraim Gildor Professor of Computational Theoretical Physics; and Kara Lamb, Associate Research Scientist in the department of Earth and Environmental Engineering, will receive awards.

Katrina Armstrong, Director of the Vagelos Institute and Harold and Margaret Hatch Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, and Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, University Professor and Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering, were named to Forbes 50 Over 50 list. Armstrong’s work has focused on clinical epidemiology, medical decision-making, and health equity. Vunjak-Novakovic's work has focused on the regeneration of human tissues, bones, and organs.

Monica Coronel (SPS’21), Faculty Associate in Technology Management at Columbia School of Professional Studies, was selected for the Fulbright Specialist Roster for 2026-2029. Her work will focus on helping higher education institutions prepare students for technology-enabled organizations through curriculum assessment, international benchmarking, faculty development, and the integration of emerging technologies and technology management into existing academic programs.

Yuval Efron (SEAS’24); Frank Guridy, Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies; Giulia Saccà, Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics; and Calvin Thrall, Assistant Professor of Political Science, have been selected as Members of the Institute for Advanced Study for the 2026-27 academic year. This prestigious fellowship recognizes the significance of this scholar’s work, and it is an opportunity to advance their research and exchange ideas with scholars from around the world.

ARTS & HUMANITIES

Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science; Kimberlé Crenshaw, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law; and John Ma, Professor of Classics, were elected as 2026 British Academy Fellows in recognition of their contributions to the humanities and social sciences. 

MEDICINE & SCIENCE

Two faculty members won awards at this year’s Society for Epidemiologic Research. Adina Zeki Al Hazzouri, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, was awarded the Carol J. Rowland Hogue Award for Outstanding Mid-Career Achievement, and Kara Rudolph, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, won the Marshall Joffe Epidemiologic Methods Research Award.

Gerard Karsenty, Paul A. Marks Professor of Genetics and Development, was awarded $17,195,933 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for “Bone as a Target and a Regulator of Aging.”

Folarin Kolawole, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia Climate School, will be awarded the 2026 Seth and Carol Stein Early Career Award in Geophysics and Geodynamics from the Geophysics & Geodynamics Division of the Geological Society of America.

Michel Sadelain, Founding Director of Columbia’s Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy, accepted the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge award for his role in developing CAR-T therapy—living drugs that use an individual’s immune cells to seek and destroy cancer cells.

Maria Antonietta Tosches, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, was named an EMBO Associate Member. EMBO is the organization of more than 2,100 leading researchers that promotes excellence in the life sciences in Europe and beyond.

Philip Michael Tuts, Professor of Physics, was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.S. ATLAS Experiment. The award recognizes his leadership over two decades at U.S. ATLAS, a major particle physics experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. It also recognizes him as an ambassador for high energy physics, and as a mentor of students, postdocs, and junior faculty.

Gao Wang, Assistant Professor of Neurological Sciences, received a grant of $13,201,195 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for “FunGen-xQTL: Unraveling the genetic basis of molecular functions in Alzheimer's Disease.” 

Renata Wentzcovitch, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics Department, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia Climate School, has been named Distinguished Lecturer of the AGU College of Fellows for 2026-2027 in recognition of her leadership and contributions to geophysics, mineral physics, and computational materials science.

ENGINEERING

Columbia University has been awarded $18 million for a new Materials Research Science and Engineering Center for Advanced Electronic Materials (AEM) by the National Science Foundation. Over the next six years, Columbia researchers involved with the new AEM center, under the direction of Colin Nuckolls, Sheldon and Dorothea Buckler Professor of Material Science, with Associate Director Xiaoyang Zhu, Howard Family Professor of Nanoscience, will focus on developing advanced electronic materials needed to improve semiconductors, quantum hardware, and other emerging electronic technologies.

Elham Azizi, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia Engineering and Herbert and Florence Irving Associate Professor of Cancer Data Research at the Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics, has been named as one of 16 recipients of a Gray Foundation grant (in collaboration with the lab of José McFaline-Figueroa, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering) and will receive up to $500K in funding over two years to support research focused on the earliest stages of BRCA-related cancers.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Nikhar Gaikwad, Assistant Professor of Political Science, with co-authors Kolby Hanson and Aliz Tóth, has received the 2026 Luebbert Best Article Prize in Comparative Politics for the article, “Bridging the Gulf: How Migration Fosters Tolerance, Cosmopolitanism, and Support for Globalization,” published in the American Journal of Political Science in 2025.

Richard R. John, Professor of History and Communications at Columbia Journalism School, received the 2026 C. Edwin Baker Award at the Intersection of Media, Markets, and Democracy from the International Communication Association. 

Eunji Kim, Assistant Professor of Political Science, has received a 2026 Distinguished Junior Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association Political Psychology Section. Kim and colleague John Marshall, Associate Professor of Political Science, along with co-authors Kirill Chmel, GSAS PhD Candidate, Tiffany Fisher-Love, and Nathaniel Lubin, were also recognized with several awards for their paper, “How Social Media Creators Shape Mass Politics: A Field Experiment During the 2024 U.S. Elections,” including the 2026 APSA Information Technology and Politics Section Best Conference Paper Award, as well as the Experimental Research Section award for Best Paper Presented at APSA in 2025. Kim also received the 2026 APSA Political Communication Section Paul Lazarsfeld Best Paper Award for her paper, “Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics,” co-authored with Erin York.

Tey Meadow, Associate Professor of Sociology, was named to the editorial board of the journal,  Contexts. The quarterly publication makes recent social research accessible to general readers, and is the public face of sociology.

Tamar Mitts, Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs, received the Best Book Award, which recognizes the best book in the area of Information Technology and Politics, for Safe Havens for Hate: The Challenge of Moderating Online Extremism.

POSTDOCS & STUDENTS

Twenty-six Columbia undergraduates were selected as 2026-2027 Millennium Fellows. Presented by the United Nations Academic Impact and MCN, the Millennium Fellowship is a semester-long leadership development program to support student leadership for UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Elisha Dura (CC'26) was accepted into the Peace Corps and departed for Cambodia in July as a primary and secondary English teacher. The Peace Corps sends passionate and skilled Americans abroad to collaborate on projects that advance both American and host country priorities.

Katie Figueroa (CC’26) was awarded a 2026 Ray Fellowship, which prepares recent college graduates for leadership roles in conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. 

Val Jeanty (CC’27) was recently accepted into the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center’s John Lewis Young Leaders program, a year-long undergraduate fellowship that prepares college students for a future in community organizing and civic engagement.

STAFF

Jacqueline Cofield (TC’24), Research Affiliate with the Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study, was recently selected for a 2026-27 Scholars-in-Residence Short-Term Fellowship at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The fellowship will inform Cofield’s scholarly writing, public programming, curriculum development, and exhibition research concerning Black childhood, material culture, play, and cultural memory.

Columbia Magazine won four 2026 “Circle of Excellence” writing awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), which recognizes achievements in alumni relations, communications, marketing, fundraising, and advancement services. Senior Editor David J. Craig won bronze for “Clearing the Path to Parenthood.” Senior Editor Paul Hond won gold for “A Brief History of Science Funding,” “How Do We Change the Way We Eat?” and “A Death Investigator Learns to Live.”