Student honors: Spring 2026
Graduation awards
Each year, awards are presented to graduating students, faculty, and staff at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Winners were announced at a celebration held in the Kresge cafeteria on May 26. Pictured at right: Ryan Thompson, PhD ’29, won an Uwe Brinkmann Memorial Travel Award. See full award list
President’s Innovation Challenge winners
Two of the 25 finalist teams in this year’s President’s Innovation Challenge were Harvard Chan School student initiatives: BLKHLTH, founded by Matthew McCurdy, DrPH ’28, and Stenoa, founded by Jeremy Levett, MPH ’27. Stenoa won second place in the student health care and life sciences track, receiving $25,000. In addition, Abigail Fizer, SM ’27, won an Ingenuity Award in the category for ventures at an earlier stage of development for her venture ReMine.
Awards and honors
Sarah Baum, PhD ’28, received a 2026 Horowitz Foundation Award from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy in recognition of her outstanding dissertation research in social policy. A student in the Population Health Sciences program, Baum’s research is at the intersection of infectious disease epidemiology and economics, with a focus on the role of human behavior in disease prevention, detection, and transmission. Her dissertation is entitled Selection and Surveillance: Linking Shocks to Safety Net Health Care Access and STI Case Detection.
Abigail Frey, PhD ’27, was the winner in Harvard’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition in March. She went on to represent the University at the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools virtual 3MT competition in April. She is a student in the Biological Sciences in Public Health program, and her research centers on how TB bacteria evade antibiotic treatment and how those insights can be translated into better diagnostic tools. Read more
Clarisza Runtung, MPH ’27, received a 2026 Environmental Health Fellowship from the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments and a 2026 Impact Fellowship from the Planetary Health Alliance this spring. She is an emergency nurse from Indonesia who is pursuing her MPH in Global Health.
Zhiyu (Roman) Yan, PhD ’29, received two competitive American Heart Association (AHA) grant funding awards (a predoctoral fellowship and another investigator-led grant) supporting his doctoral research. A student in the Biostatistics program, he was also recognized by AHA with the Vascular Cognitive Impairment Award (watch ACA video) and Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award.
