Faculty and university leadership selected Merve Ileri-Tayar, a doctoral student in psychological and brain sciences, as the winner of the 2025 Dean’s Award for Graduate Research Excellence. Four additional graduate students were also recognized.
On Oct. 24, finalists for the 2025 Dean’s Award for Graduate Research Excellence had the opportunity to present their work to faculty and university leadership, including members of the Arts & Sciences National Council. After rounds of lightning talks, the council selected Merve Ileri-Tayar, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, as the prize winner.
Departments and programs across Arts & Sciences could nominate up to two graduate students for the award, which recognizes outstanding achievements in research or creative practice from the past two years.
William Acree, interim vice dean of graduate education and a professor of Spanish, introduced the finalists and discussed the award criteria. "These five finalists were selected from a group of 21 graduate students nominated by their departments for their exemplary level of achievement," Acree said. "Presenting to this group of Arts & Sciences National Council members is an incredible achievement and demonstrates their commitment to furthering academic inquiry."
Winner
Merve Ileri-Tayar, Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences
Adviser: Julie Bugg
Presentation: “The Invisible Attention Coach: How the Brain Learns to Focus"
Ileri-Tayar is a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences and a fellow of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy. Her research investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying attention and goal-directed behavior, with a focus on item-specific attention. She examines how people learn associations between experiences and attention settings, and how these settings transfer to novel situations. She also investigates reward-based modulations of attention and attention dynamics in aging.
Finalists
Gabrielle Adams, Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences
Adviser: Katharina Lodders
Presentation: "The Stardust of Yesterday"
Adams is a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences. She graduated from The Ohio State University in May 2023 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and a minor in planetary science. With advisor Katharina Lodders, she models gas and condensation chemistry in evolved stars using chemical thermodynamics to understand stardust formation from such dying stars.
Héctor Pineda Cupa, Hispanic Studies Program
Adviser: Stephanie Kirk
Presentation: “Reading Aquatic Archives: Poesis as Diagnosis of Colonial Extraction”
Cupa is a PhD student in the Hispanic Studies Graduate Program. He is currently a fellow at the John Carter Brown Library and the author of "These Are the Times to Be Silent: Sor Josefa de Castillo" and "A History of Silence in the New Kingdom of Granada (1671–1742)." His research focuses on female conventual life in colonial Latin America, bodies of water, and ecocritical approaches to the colonial literary corpus of present-day Colombia in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Ruotian Gong, Department of Physics
Adviser: Chong Zu
Presentation: “Building Sensors for the Quantum Age”
Gong is a PhD candidate in the Department of Physics. He studies spin qubits in solid-state systems to explore their potential for quantum sensing and information processing. His work seeks to deepen the understanding of quantum coherence and interactions in these materials, contributing to the development of scalable quantum technologies.
Annie Jarman, Department of Political Science
Adviser: Diana Z. O'Brien
Presentation: “Toll of Trolls: Gendered Online Hostility and Women Politicians”
Jarman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science. Her dissertation combines computational text analysis and experimental methods to examine how online hostility shapes women’s political ambition and representation in the United States. Her research has received national recognition, including the award for Best Paper on Women and Politics at the largest political science conference in 2024.
Semifinalists
Weiye "Rex" Deng, Department of Political Science
Laura Evers, Department of English
Chun Huang, Department of Physics
Bayla Kamens, The John and Penelope Biggs Department of Classics
Kim Lacey, Department of History
Collin Merrick, Department of Chemistry
Christina Smiley, Department of Music
Alexander Wentzell, Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program
Lauren Wiseman-Jones, Department of Anthropology
