Each spring, the University of Texas at Austin recognizes undergraduate students for superior scholarly or creative achievement. The UT Co-op George H. Mitchell Award honors undergraduate students who have demonstrated unparalleled dedication and achievement in their fields of study.
All awards are faculty nominated, and the selection committee consists of diverse faculty members.
This year, 52 undergraduate students submitted their research or creative project in one of four categories: artistic/creative, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). A committee of faculty members reviewed each application and selected four from each category to recognize as semifinalists. Of the 15 semifinalists, six submissions were selected as recipients of the 2024 UT Co-op George H. Mitchell Award and four were selected for special recognition.
Awardees received awards from $7,000 to $1,500 for their submission.
2024 UT Co-op George H. Mitchell Award Recipients
Josíah Garza
Award: $7,000
Major: Music Composition and Biology
Category: Grand Prize, Artistic /Creative
Winning Project: MARIA
Anirudh Sudarshan
Award: $7,000
Major: Neuroscience Honors
Category: Grand Prize, Social Sciences
Winning Project: Analysis of Geographic Accessibility of Breast, Lung, and Colorectal Cancer Screening Centers Among American Indian and Alaskan Native Tribes
Arianne Ohman
Award: $5,000
Major: Plan II and International Relations and Global Studies
Category: Humanities
Winning Project: Contemporary Art as a Political Tool in Modern China
Nikita Kakkad
Award: $5,000
Major: Plan II and Biomedical Engineering Honors
Category: Social Sciences
Winning Project: Reproductive Health in Texas Post-Dobbs: Physician Narratives
Lars Deutz
Award: $5,000
Major: Neuroscience Honors
Category: STEM
Winning Project: Membrane extraction in native lipid nanodiscs reveals dynamic regulation of Cdc42 complexes during cell polarization
Melanie Quintero
Tuan Nguyen
Ana Metelski
Elizabeth Kinerk
Katherine Le
Award: $5,000
Category: Artistic/Creative
Group’s Winning Project: Palace of Poetry
2024 George H. Mitchell Award – Special Recognition
Jersey Robinson
Award: $1,500
Major: Radio-Television-Film
Category: Artistic/Creative
Project: The Practice Session
Brandon Foskett
Award: $1,500
Major: Music
Category: Humanities
Project: Pretty and Problematic: The Use of Music in Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name”
Michell Magnus Ducloux
Award: $1,500
Major: Plan I Honors French and Humanities
Category: Social Sciences
Project: The Racialization of Hispanic Undergraduates and the Subordination of Spanish at the University of Texas at Austin: Explorations and Recommendations
Nirmal Patel
Award: $1,500
Major: Physics Honors
Category: STEM
Project: Physics Informed Neural Networks for Calculating Quasi-Normal Modes of Schwarzschild Black Holes
2024 George H. Mitchell Semi-Finalists
Jeffrey Chuong, STEM
Kevin Wen, STEM
Gloria Wang, Humanities
Ruth Befekadu, Social Sciences
Kenny Ly, Artistic/Creative