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Honors and Awards
Department Awards

Each year the Department of Computer Science nominates students, faculty, and staff who have gone above and beyond to make our community better. We honor and recognize the following people who have worked tirelessly towards excellence in computer science mentoring, teaching, and service.

2021 – 2022 Awards

Northwestern CS celebrates annual department awards, graduating senior awards, and quarterly teaching assistant and peer mentor awards.

Annual Department Awards

Each academic year, Northwestern CS honors faculty, staff, and students who provided exceptional service to the department or excelled in research projects.

Staff Heroes

Pam Villalovoz
Katie Winters

Instructor of the Year

Branden Ghena

Faculty Service Award

Nikos Hardavellas

Research Mentor Award

Xiao Wang

PhD Student Research Award

Liren Shan

Student Heroes

Aldo Aguilar
Ayobami Bolaji

Graduating Senior Awards

CS Undergraduate Research Award

Nominated by Northwestern CS faculty, awardees made significant contributions to research while pursuing an undergraduate degree.

Drew Kersnar
Caspar Popova
Nathan White

Outstanding CS Senior Award

Outstanding computer science students earning degrees from Northwestern Engineering and Northwestern's Weinberg School of Arts and Sciences excelled across multiple dimensions – academics, service, peer mentorship, leadership, outreach, and research.

Ayobami Bolaji (McCormick)
Kevin Mendoza Tudares (McCormick)
Julia Odden (Weinberg)
Megha Ramanathan (McCormick)
Carina Ramos (McCormick)
Alexander Redding (Weinberg)
Kelly Su (McCormick)
Peter Zhong (McCormick)

Outstanding Peer Mentors

Awarded for outstanding student mentorship in the CS community. Nominated by any member of the department.

Rohil Bahl (Winter quarter)
Cooper Barth (Fall quarter)
Afreen Bhumgara (Spring quarter)
Huaxuan Chen (Spring quarter)
Abigail Coneeny (Fall quarter)
Xamantha Laos Cuevas (Spring quarter)
Chase Duvall (Fall quarter)
Olivia Escousse (Winter quarter)
Rohith Jayaraman (Winter quarter)
Dilan Nair (Winter quarter)
Julia Odden (Spring quarter)
Henry Pereira (Spring quarter)
Ariella Silver (Fall quarter)
Jipeng Sun (Winter quarter)
Hannah Zimmerman (Fall quarter)

Outstanding Teaching Assistants

Awarded for outstanding teaching assistantship in the CS community. Nominated by any member of the department.

Jiwon Choi (Fall quarter)
Aravind Reddy (Spring quarter)
Madhav Suresh (Winter quarter)

Jump to a Section

2020 – 2021 Awards

Student Heroes

  • Olivia Gallagher
  • Kevin Mendoza Tudares

PhD Student Research Award

  • Maitraye Dasr
  • Yiding Feng
  • Lukas Lazarek
  • Chenkai Weng

Outstanding Peer Mentors

  • Spencer Colton (Fall quarter)
  • Ben Fisk (Winter quarter)
  • Olivia Gallagher (Winter quarter)
  • Aaron Nelson (Spring quarter)
  • Liam O'Carroll (Winter quarter)
  • Linus Okoth (Spring quarter)
  • Rafael Rodriguez (Winter quarter)
  • Chris Song (Spring quarter)
  • Li Kang Tan (Spring quarter)
  • Peter Zhong (Spring quarter)

Outstanding Teaching Assistants

  • Rawan Alharbi (Spring quarter)
  • Yash Patel (Winter quarter)
  • Natalie Melo (Fall quarter)

Instructors of the Year

  • Kate Compton
  • Jesse Tov

Faculty Service Award

Sara Sood

Best Research Mentors

  • Peter Dinda
  • Aravindan Vijayaraghavan

Staff Heroes

  • Julia Blend
  • Iliana Vargas

2019 – 2020 Awards

Student Hero

  • Anna Deng
  • Alayna Richmond

Outstanding Peer Mentor

  • Charlotte Jones (Spring quarter)
  • Anna Deng (Winter quarter)
  • Daniel Birnbaum (Fall quarter)

Outstanding Teaching Assistant

  • Florian Schiffers (Spring quarter)
  • Kaiyu Hou (Winter quarter)
  • Lief Rasmussen (Fall quarter)

Instructor of the Year

  • Steve Tarzia
  • Sarah Van Wart

Faculty Service Award

  • Robby Findler
  • Jennie Rogers

Best Research Mentor

Marcelo Worsley

Staff Hero

Melissa Duong