2024 Graduate Student Achievement Awards

Meet our 2024 Recipients

Each year the College of Liberal Arts recognizes outstanding scholars with the Graduate Student Achievement Award at Honors Day.  

Mahesh Acharya (Ph.D. Political Science '24)

Mahesh teased out policy insights such as foreign policy orientations from the psychological characteristics of political leaders. To that end, Acharya employed recent advances in machine learning techniques to understand the personality of global leaders using their linguistic cues from textual statements. His project won prestigious Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants (NSF fund) from the American Political Science Association which enabled him to collect novel textual datasets on Indian Prime Ministers including their rare private letters. His other research projects link dispositional traits of populist and women leaders to policy outcomes and examine the political trust of religious minorities in South Asia which has been published as a co-authored paper in Asian Survey from the University of California Press.

Ellie Black (Ph.D. English '24)

Ellie is a poet, memoirist, screenwriter, and editor from Arkansas, has poems in The Drift, Ninth Letter, Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Best New Poets, and DIAGRAM. Her prose and criticism appear in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Georgia Review, and the Adroit Journal. She attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, the Bucknell Seminar, and NYU’s Writers in New York program. Winner of the 2023 Pinch Literary Prize in Poetry, she received awards from UM, the CD Wright Women Writer’s Conference, the Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas, Hendrix College, Split Lip Magazine, and the Austin Film Festival.

Somayeh Faal (M.F.A. Art '24)

Somayeh, an award-winning artist originally from the Middle East, studies the desertification of wetlands caused by human action. Her concepts and materials are interdisciplinary—from using scientific processes to experiment with how salt can become an art medium to exploring ecological issues through printmaking, sculpture, and video. 

“I have many stories, and I put my foot beyond the boundaries to prove all the impossibilities are possible. I usually interpret my stories in my paintings and artworks. In my first and second series, I survey women’s obstacles in my society. In my recent artworks, I invest in environmental issues and their effect on humans.”

Peyton Lawler (MFA Art '24)

Peyton, a ceramic potter and artist from Huntsville, Alabama, creates functional pottery and sculptural wall pieces that are influenced by the concept of time. Her award-winning work has been widely exhibited. 

“My work is about facing difficulties that have challenged me throughout my life and finding ways to persevere through them. I am drawn to clean, rectilinear forms but am incorporating this broken, cracked texture to emphasize the fragility of the piece. There is strength in the form as it still stands despite missing pieces of itself.”

Matthew Saucier (Ph.D. Chemistry '24)

Matthew, from Diamondhead, pursued undergraduate and graduate studies in organic chemistry with specialization in medicinal chemistry methods development, fluorine chemistry, NIR dye synthesis, and photophysical characterization. His dissertation, “Near Infrared and Shortwave Infrared Dyes for Biological Imaging, Bloodstain Detection, and Optoelectronic Applications,” has opened this field in new directions that are providing novel molecules with the potential for the highest resolution yet for such applications. His research is at the forefront of making medical imaging more precise, less invasive, and more affordable. With several publications in international academic journals and a presentation at the American Chemical Society national meeting, he is notably completing his doctorate degree in less than three years.

Rabina Shrestha (Ph.D. Biological Science '24)

Rabina is from Nepal. She studies the role of intracellular signaling pathways in heart development. An accomplished researcher, teaching assistant, and integral member of the biology department, she has more than five years of laboratory expertise in genetics and molecular biology techniques and is passionate about applying this knowledge to advance innovative research projects and collaborating with diverse teams to drive scientific advancement. With multiple awards for research and publications in four journals, Shrestha’s studies have received international attention and been selected for presentations at several conferences.

Natasha Wood (Ph.D. Psychology '24) 

Natasha studies experimental psychology focusing on extremism, social technologies, and ostracism/isolation. Her dissertation topic is the Online Radicalization Dynamics in Incel Communities.

“In general, I study the motivations that drive people to violent extremism, particularly when they are deprived of their psychological needs, such as after experiencing social isolation, loneliness, and/or ostracism. In my research, I use both experimental manipulations of isolation/ostracism and measure self-report real world experiences of these constructs. While I primarily study extremism, I also have separate lines of work investigating firearm ownership, ghosting intentions, and the use of smartphones as replacement of face-to-face communication.”