UROP Outstanding Mentor Awards
The UROP Outstanding Mentor Award Ceremony will be held Thursday, April 22nd from 12:00pm – 12:50pm Eastern Daylight Time.
This $500 monetary award recognizes UROP research mentors for their outstanding mentorship of UROP students. The award recipients were nominated by their UROP students and selected by a committee composed of UROP Staff and Peer Facilitators. These individuals have shared their passion for their work, a talent for teaching, patience in training novice researchers, and have most notably taken an interest in their students’ academic, personal and professional futures.
Outstanding Mentor Award winners will be announced during the ceremony and posted on the UROP website.
Outstanding Mentor Nominees
Omar Ahmed, PhD 
Fadhl Alakwaa, PhD 
Samer M Ali, PhD 
Kevin Bakker, PhD, MSc 
Katherine Bauer, PhD 
Audrey Bennett, MFA 
Melissa Borja, PhD 
Subba Rao Chaganti, PhD 
Luciana de Souza Leão, PhD 
Ron Eglash, PhD 
Matt Friedman, PhD 
Siria Gámez, PhD Candidate 
Lorenzo García-Amaya, PhD 
Mark Guzdial, PhD 
Nabih Haddad, PhD 
Kayla R. S. Hale, PhD Candidate 
Kurt D. Hankenson, DVM, PhD 
Kim Kearfott, ScD 
Peter Kim, PhD Candidate 
Jackie Kleinsasser, PhD Candidate 
Pennelope Kunkle, Research Coordinator 
Ian Lang, MPH 
Vincent Longo, PhD Candidate 
Kenneth Lowande, PhD 
Stephanie Lu, BBA 
Nathaniel Thomas Marshall, PhD 
Pooja Neiman, MD, MPA 
Nikhil Parekh, MD, MPH 
Zachary Reese, PhD Candidate 
Giulia Riccò, PhD 
Amanda Schutz, PhD 
Sylvia Simioni, PhD Candidate 
Julia M. Smith, PhD Candidate 
Matthew Solomon, PhD 
Ben Swanson, DDS/PhD Candidate 
Nadia R. Sutton, MD, MPH 
Elizabeth Trinh, PhD Candidate 
Thomas Valley, MD, MSc
Award Ceremony Keynote – Dean Curzan
Anne Curzan is the dean of the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA), the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature, Linguistics, and Education, and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor. From 2012-2016 she served as the faculty athletics representative for the University of Michigan, and from 2015-2019 she was associate dean for the humanities in LSA. Her research focuses on the history of the English language, attitudes about language change, language and gender, and pedagogy. Professor Curzan has received university awards for outstanding research and undergraduate teaching, including the Henry Russel Award and the John Dewey Award. She has published multiple books and dozens of articles; her most recent books include Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History (2014) and the third edition of the co-authored textbook How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction (2012). She has also created the audio/video courses “Secret Life of Words: English Words and Their Origins” and “English Grammar Boot Camp” for Great Courses. Professor Curzan wrote for six years for the blog Lingua Franca for the Chronicle of Higher Education and is the featured expert on the segment “That’s What They Say” on local NPR affiliate Michigan Radio.
Personal website: https://acurzan.english.lsa.umich.edu/
