Two seniors win Pyne Prize

Two seniors, Caroline Hanamirian ’13 and Jake Nebel ’13, have been awarded the Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, the highest general distinction the University confers on undergraduate students.

Four graduate students, Angele Christin GS, Laura Gandolfi GS, George Young GS and Jiaying Zhao GS, were granted the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship.

The Pyne Prize is awarded annually to the two seniors who have most clearly demonstrated excellent scholarship, strength of character and effective leadership. The Jacobus Fellowship is awarded to the four graduate students whose work has displayed the highest scholarly excellence.

The Pyne Prize winners were anonymously nominated for the honor and notified about their selection last Wednesday.

“I was completely shocked but really, truly honored,” Hanamirian said. “It is really unique because it’s not only for academics but for being active on campus and character, which is why it is so humbling to be nominated for.”

Hanamirian, a Wilson School major from Villanova, Pa., has conducted independent research on the ways top-tier universities can work to enhance the pipeline of low-income applicants. Her interest in this topic developed after taking a freshman seminar taught by Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 in which she worked on a group project with fellow winner Nebel. They presented a proposal to develop community service projects in the residential colleges.

“It was Professor Eisgruber’s freshman seminar that freshman fall, which is the class that me and Jake were in together, that first sparked my interest in researching what responsibilities our nation’s universities have toward serving the public good,” Hanamirian said. “I feel like I’ve really come full circle, being able to research this for my thesis.”

“It was amazing, and that seminar helped shape my Princeton experience,” Nebel said.

Hanamirian served as editor-in-chief of Business Today and held various USG positions. She is also the Class Day co-chair on the 2013 Commencement Committee. She will work at Goldman Sachs after graduation and said that she hopes to combine her interests of entrepreneurship and education reform in her career in the future.

Nebel, a philosophy major from Winter Park, Fla., has concentrated on moral philosophy and normative ethics in his independent work. His senior thesis explores the ethical implications of and philosophical issues related to status-quo bias.

Nebel’s interest in philosophy developed after taking ethics professor Peter Singer’s course on practical ethics during his freshman year. While in high school, he participated in debate competitions related to applied ethics and public policy, and in college he coached high school debaters.

“My work in that has also reinforced the idea that fundamental questions in ethics can have a great bearing on how we approach practical problems,” Nebel said.

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Nebel won the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence in both 2010 and 2011, and his academic work has been published in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy.

Nebel was also active in protesting the University’s ban on freshman rush, which was proposed in spring 2011 and made official by University president Shirley Tilghman that summer. A member and former president of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, Nebel organized the Princeton Greek Council to lobby the University and wrote an open letter to Tilghman urging her not to implement the ban. Last year, he served on the committee charged with crafting the specific language of the policy.

He will pursue a master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Oxford as a 2013 Marshall Scholar and plans to pursue a career as a philosophy professor, judge or lawyer.

The Jacobus fellows were first nominated by their departments last January and were required to complete an application including a personal statement, a description of their research and three letters of recommendation.

“I was just really grateful that they picked me, but also hearing about what some of the other winners were doing just kind of made me really appreciate how many amazing things people are doing all around the University,” Young said.

Young, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Kalangadoo, Australia, currently focuses on the study of group dynamics in nature to develop algorithms that can automate biologically inspired robots.

“The contrast between what we can build and what we see in nature made me really want to see if there’s anything we can learn to improve what we do with robots,” Young said. He said that he wants to continue studying robotics and shift his research focus to developing hardware so that he can work on robotic applications of his theoretical research.

The Jacobus fellows were notified about their selection last May. The fellowship covers a year of tuition at the University and also includes a stipend to cover living expenses.

“I was delirious. I wasn’t expecting it because it was such a competitive fellowship,” said Zhao, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology from Hangzhou, China. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

Zhao’s dissertation explores the mind’s perception of structure and randomness. She has also worked on projects analyzing the process by which people refine their beliefs and the effects of poverty on cognition and behavior.

Zhao is interested in studying the development of cognition because “it’s fundamental to how we think, how we behave, how we see the world.”

She will join the University of British Columbia as an assistant professor of psychology next year.

Gandolfi, a Ph.D. candidate in Spanish and Portuguese languages and cultures, researches the ways that material and fictional objects, specifically those of 19th-century Mexico, work to create a Mexican national identity.

“I’ve always been interested in material objects and the ways in which they shape our reality — I am myself a collector of Russian matryoshkas — and I tried to include my passion to another great passion, that of Mexican literature,” she said, alluding to the well-known Russian nested dolls.

Gandolfi said that she hopes to continue studying words, objects and images related to Mexican cultural production and is considering a career as a teacher and mentor.

“I want to train students in developing a critical approach toward not only literary texts but also other forms of cultural production, such as objects and images,” Gandolfi added.

Christin, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology from Parma, Italy, could not be reached for comment, as he was traveling. Christin studies the development of online media and its effects on work in modern society, according to a University press release.

The winners of the Pyne Prize and Jacobus Fellowship will be honored at the Alumni Day ceremony on Saturday.