Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences celebrated students in the Class of 2026 for their academic achievements during its May 13 convocation ceremony.
The ceremony, hosted by Dr. Barbara Hempstead, dean of Weill Cornell Graduate School, honored students who are graduating with their master’s degrees, as well as those who earned special awards and prizes for their accomplishments in research, scholarship and service. The ceremony also recognized exemplary graduate school faculty.
2026 Award Winners
Distinguished Student Commencement Speaker Award
Kenneth Wayne Johnson
Pharmacology Program
(Mentor: Conor Liston, M.D., Ph.D.)
Julian R. Rachele Prize
Daniel Barnett, “Mitochondrial complex III-derived ROS amplify immunometabolic changes in astrocytes and promote dementia pathology.” Nature Metabolism. (Mentor: Anna Orr, Ph.D., Adam Orr, Ph.D.)
UkJin Lee, “Postmitotic transcription and 3D regulation show locus-specific and differentiation-specific responses to cohesion depletion.” Nature Genetics. (Mentor: Effie Apostolou, Ph.D.)
David P. Hajjar Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring Award
Minkui Luo, Ph.D.
Member, Sloan Kettering Institute
Chemical Biology Program
Program Specific Teaching and Mentoring Awards
Richard Hite, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Structural Biology
Biochemistry and Structural Biology, BCMB Program
Matthias Stadtfeld, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Cell Biology in Medicine
Cell and Developmental Biology, BCMB Program
Dirk Remus, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Molecular Biology
Molecular Biology, BCMB Program
Gretchen Diehl, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biochemistry
Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis Program
Amy Kuceyeski, Ph.D.
Professor of Mathematics in Neuroscience
Neuroscience Program
Harel Weinstein, D.Sc.
Professor of Systems and Computational Biomedicine
Physiology, Biophysics, and Systems Biology Program
Laura Pinheiro, Ph.D., MPH
Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences
Population Health Sciences Program
Research and Scholarly Excellence Awards
Mary Hou
Health Informatics Program
Sandhya Rajagopalan
Health Policy and Economics Program
Wenbo Huang
Biostatistics and Data Science Program
Community Engagement Award
Meghana Manis
Health Informatics Program
Healthcare Impact Award
Lyn Ghalayini
Health Informatics Program
Caitlin Davis
Health Informatics Program
Excellence in Healthcare Leadership Award
Adetokunbo Obayemi
Health Informatics Program
Executive MBA/MS in Healthcare Leadership
Student Service Awards
Natalia Rivera-Sanchez
Pharmacology Program
In recognition of her deep commitment to mentoring, leadership and consistent support of inclusion and belonging activities across our institution.
Gabrielle Peterson
BCMB Allied Program
In recognition of her contributions in the service of students with disabilities and as founder and president of the Student Disability Association at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Vincent Du Vigneaud Research Symposium Awards
Oral Presentation Awards
First Place: Bjoern Perder, “Hypoxia-activated scleraxis guides perivascular differentiation of epicardial progenitors in heart development and regeneration.” (Jingli Cao, Ph.D.)
Second Place: Richard Garner, “FOXA2 reprograms androgen signaling to promote lineage plasticity in advanced prostate cancer.” (David Rickman, Ph.D.)
Third Place: Charlie Warren, “Profiling Ubiquitin Interactions and Affinities.” (Jacob Geri, Ph.D.)
Poster Presentation Award – First Year
Nolan Caile, “Dissecting the role of histone acetyltransferase CBP/p300 on the transcriptional and architectural establishment of cell-type specific programs following cell division.” (Effie Apostolou, Ph.D.)
Cheyenne Bright, “A locus-level bioinformatics framework for quantifying 23S rRNA copy number and linezolid resistance mutations in enterococcus faecium.” (Cesar A. Arias, M.D., M.Sc., Ph.D.)
Poster Presentation Awards – Second Year and Above
Aakanksha Rajiv Kapoor, “Novel insights into the immunoregulatory role of radiation activated club cells in non-small cell lung cancer.” (Vivek Mittal, Ph.D.)
Esther Lee, “Mechanical licensing of cytotoxic degranulation.” (Morgan Huse, Ph.D.)
Guillermo Hoppe-Elsholz, “Transferable B-lactam resistance in multidrug-resistant enterococcus faecalis (Efs) via truncation of pbp4 and acquisition of a novel PBP (PBP-4a) gene.” (Cesar A. Arias, M.D., M.Sc., Ph.D.)
Margarida Rosa, “A molecular mechanism of Li⁺ inhibition of MFSD2A mediated lysolipid transport.” (George Khelashvili, Ph.D.)
Matthew Fiedler, “Recapitulation of tissue-scale ventricular tachyarrhythmicmechanisms in human heart tissues.” (Francisco Altamirano, Ph.D.)
Sandy Rajkumar, “BEND3 regulates polycomb-mediated epigenetic repression during development.” (Yicheng Long, Ph.D.)
Ziqi (Christine) Yu, “Targeting cytosolic mutant IDH1 by hyperactivation to induce cancer cytotoxicity.” (Andy Intlekofer, M.D., Ph.D.)
Aliya Holland, “Mechanosurveillance of Senescent Cells.” (Morgan Huse, Ph.D.)