The Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award honors a truly outstanding dissertation researched and written by a UB doctoral student who has received a PhD within the past five years.
The winner of the Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award is determined via a nomination and selection process that occurs during the fall semester. The Graduate School submits UB's winner to the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools (NAGS), for their Doctoral Dissertation Award.
Thank you for your nominations. Check back in fall 2025 for the next nomination cycle.
To be eligible for this award an individual must have received a PhD from UB within the past five years in a designated subject area. Nominations are invited from among four broad subject areas over a four-year period according to the following schedule:
Students who have not yet received a PhD from UB are not eligible for this award.
A nomination package must be submitted as a single, integrated PDF that includes the following documents:
Supporting letters should provide specific insight into the extraordinary quality of the dissertation and its impact.
Year | Winner | Dissertation Title |
---|---|---|
2024-25 | Andrew Lindquist | (Re)Imagining Community: Settler Anxiety, Ethnographic Desire, and Haudenosaunee Nationalisms in the Assimilation Era |
2023-24 | Yulin Yang | Chronic Pain and Social Relationships Among Midlife and Older Adults in the United States |
2022-23 | Allison Cluett | Investigating Late Quatemary Temperature and Precipitation Dynamics on Greenland Using Organic Geochemical and Stable Isotope Proxies. |
2021-22 | Emily R. Oakley | Finite Elemental Guided Dosimetry for Interstitial Photodynamic Therapy |
2020-21 | Andrew Dorkin | The Mind Sneezing: Modernist Poetry and the Para-Mediation of Humor |
2019-20 | Aysegul Balta Ozgen | Refugee Integration in Comparative Perspective: Syrians in Canada, Germany, Turkey and the United States |
2018-19 | Yumiao Zhang | Low Temperature Block Copolymer Processing for Biomedical Applications |
2017-18 | Laurie Rich | Photoacoustic Imaging of Head and Neck Cancer: Preclinical Optimization and Clinical Translation |
2016-17 | Shosuke Kinugawa | Mark Twain's Secret Writings |
2015-16 | Alice Mitchell | Linguistic Avoidance and Social Relations in Datooga |