Kudos is an occasional column that recognizes Dartmouth faculty, students, and staff who have received awards or other honors. Did you or a colleague recently receive an award or honor? Please tell us about it: dartmouth.news@dartmouth.edu.
A team of six undergraduates sponsored by the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship took first place in the New England regionals of the Venture Capital Investment Competition in Boston in January.
The team, which included Jake Griffith ’27, Cooper Weissman ’27, Shira Elisha ’27, Andrew Swack ’27, Julia Ebner ’28, and TaoHeng Chen ’28, traveled to Boston College for the competition, which gives students the opportunity to take on the role of venture capitalists and hear pitches from real startups. After research and vetting, the teams deliver a written statement about which startup they want to back. The Dartmouth team’s investment plan was judged the best, and the team was awarded a check for $1,000 in addition to the title.
The team travels to North Carolina in April to compete in the Venture Capital Investment Competition global finals. VCIC is the world’s largest venture capital competition with over 120 university and graduate school teams competing.
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Miya Xie, associate professor of Chinese and comparative East Asian literature, and Andrew Simon, senior lecturer of Middle Eastern studies, received awards from the Modern Language Association of America for their recent books.
Xie received the MLA’s First Book Prize for Territorializing Manchuria: The Transnational Frontier and Literatures of East Asia, which was published by the Harvard University Asia Center.
Simon is a co-winner of the 2024 MLA Prize for Contingent Faculty and Independent Scholars for his critically acclaimed book from Stanford University Press, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt.
The two scholars received their awards at the MLA’s annual convention in New Orleans last month. Founded in 1883, the MLA and its more than 20,000 members from 100 countries work to strengthen the study and teaching of languages and literature.
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Former Geisel School of Medicine faculty member Jason McLellan, a structural biologist whose groundbreaking coronavirus research at Geisel laid the foundation for COVID-19 vaccines that have saved countless lives, has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
In the January announcement, the NIHF wrote that McLellan, along with research partner virologist Barney Graham at the National Institutes of Health, “used structure-based vaccine design to stabilize and modify surface proteins of viruses. They successfully applied their discoveries to the development of COVID-19 vaccines, contributing to billions of vaccine doses administered worldwide since 2020. The first vaccines approved for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) also are based on their work.”
Since 1973, when the Hall of Fame was co-founded in partnership with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the membership has inducted patent-holding inventors whose work has made lives easier, safer, healthier and more fulfilling.
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Marisol Maddox has been named a 2025 Senior Arctic Fellow by the Institute of Arctic Studies at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding. An Arctic climate and security expert, Maddox is well-known internationally for her work on emerging “actorless threats”—including rapid climate change and biodiversity loss—and the ways in which they intersect with the conventional threat environment.
“Marisol Maddox brings an exceptional depth of Arctic expertise at the intersection of climate change, security, and governance—issues that are more pressing than ever in international diplomacy and of great interest to a diversity of Dartmouth students, faculty, and alumni,” says Institute of Arctic Studies Director Melody Brown Burkins, Guarini ’95, ’98.
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Herschel Nachlis, associate director and senior policy fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and research assistant professor of Government, joined the Granite United Way board of directors this fall.
The Granite United Way board welcomed Nachlis, noting that he “brings a strong dedication to improving conditions across our community.”
Granite United Way is the largest United Way in New Hampshire, serving more than 85% of the state and Windsor County, Vt.
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Maureen Boardman, clinical assistant professor of community and family medicine at Geisel School of Medicine, has received recognition from the New Hampshire Area Health Education Center for her mentoring work helping students apply theory to practice.
Boardman received a 2024 NH Preceptor Recognition Award for “many years of exceptional precepting of medical students in Geisel’s On-Doctoring program and nurse practitioner students” in New Hampshire nurse practitioner programs.
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The Occupational and Environmental Medicine team at Geisel School of Medicine, headed by Karen Huyck, was awarded the Resilient Workplace Innovation Award by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Disability Employment Policy “for developing the Resilient Workplace Certification program to support workers with mental health conditions, recognizing gaps in available resources and addressing them.”
The work was done in partnership with Vermont Invest Employee Assistance Program Centers for Wellbeing as part of the VT RETAIN Program, funded by a $22M grant to the State of Vermont. To fill a gap in existing services, the Dartmouth team partnered with Invest EAP to create Resilient Workplace Training and Certification to support employers in creating physically and psychologically safe workplaces.
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Jaime Cleek, research cyberstructure engineer with Information, Technology, and Consulting, has received the Katie Vale Memorial Scholarship from the NorthEast Regional Computing Program in recognition of her “passion for the role of technology in higher education.”
Cleek embodies the values of “professional excellence, creative vision, and self-motivation to learn, overcome challenges, grow, and help others,” the NERCOMP awards committee wrote.
Cleek will accept the honor at the annual NERCOMP conference in April.