The 2026 School of Design Student Award Winners

Each year, the School of Design holds our Design Awards program during Design Week of the spring semester. This event celebrates the academic talents of our students and their contributions to the school. Several awards are presented during the event: School of Design awards, Donors awards, and Partnership awards (organizations that the school has associations with). All of our awards are funded by generous alumni, individual donors, and organizations to honor student achievements and passions. We are grateful to all of our donors for their support.

More info about each of the awards can be found here.

The 2026 Student Award Winners are:

Design Merit Awards

First Years
Elizabeth Thomas
Yubo Zhang

Sophomores
Yelim Kim (Communications)
Sofia Limena (Products)
Yutong Zhen (Environments)

Juniors
Sonya He (Communications)
Luke Shen (Products)
Karis Choe (Environments)

Seniors
Chloe Sun (Communications)
Brooke Schwartz (Products)
Brandt Li (Environments)

MA
Shemona Singh

MDes I / MPS
Sahana Sundararajan

MDes II
Jay Moon

PhD
Saurin Nanavati

Design Service Awards

Undergrad
Joanna Ni

Masters
Alexis Morrell

PhD
Will Martin

Lee Goldman Scholarship Award

Stacy Chen (Communications)
Gabrielle Acker (Products)
Sarah Chen (Environments)

Marilyn Meltzer Award

Hayool Park

Ed Szylinski Design Award for Blue Sky Thinking

Maddie Philhower

Kier Service Design & Social Innovation Award

Undergrad
Eliseea Faur

Masters
Diane Hu

Award for Excellence in Product and Environments Design

Viviana Staicu (Products)

Emily Lau (Environments)

Mark Mentzer Award for Drawing

Beatriz Pimenta Medas

Congratulations to all of our winners!