2022 Scholar and Alumni Award Recipients

 

At Scholars Weekend 2022, the Foundation presented three awards to Cooke Scholars and Alumni. The awards recognize Cooke Scholars and Alumni who have demonstrated outstanding achievement during the prior three years. Such achievements may include the development of an innovative solution to a societal problem, creation of a significant community program, or publication of an important work. In all cases, their outstanding achievement touched the lives of others in meaningful ways and demonstrated impact.

  • The Matthew J. Quinn Prize is a $10,000 award that may be given annually to one or more current Cooke Graduate Scholars or Cooke Scholar Alumni.

  • The Undergraduate Scholar Award in Honor of Dennis I. Belcher is a $5,000 award that may be given annually to one or more current Cooke College Scholars or Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholars.

  • The Harold O. Levy Prize is a $5,000 award recognizing an outstanding Cooke Scholar studying at the University of Oxford.

2022 Scholar and Alumni Award Recipients

Thomas Thekkekandam (Quinn Prize Recipient)

2006 Graduate Scholar, Duke University

Thomas is the co-founder, CFO and Head of Strategy for Green Top Farms, a small food-service business with a social mission based in New York City. Along with the company’s co-founder, they established the organization to build a more sustainable food system - designing operations to supporting local food producers and bringing fresh, seasonal food to the consumers of New York City, many of whom live in food deserts.

Thomas is most proud of the work he did during the COVID-19 Pandemic to feed New York City's most vulnerable. In the first quarter of 2020, Thomas took on an even deeper leadership role to establish a new government contracting and nonprofit business division within the company by leading the process of developing relationships with federal and local government agencies, homeless shelters, and food pantries. Ultimately, Green Top Farms was able to deliver over 1 million meals to the city’s homebound elderly in a meals-on-wheels type program. Additionally, during the pandemic they became the USDA’s only NYC-based contractor to support the Farmers-to-Families Food program. In that role, they rescued over 11 million pounds of produce that might otherwise have spoiled in the fields. They supported local family-based farms and fed millions of New Yorkers. And in the process, Green Top Farms was able to parlay these programs into $750 thousand worth of additional food donations to homeless shelters and food pantries. The organization was able to not lay off or furlough a single person during the pandemic, which was a prime concern of the employees when COVID hit. Through Thomas’ leadership and his team’s work, Green Top Farms have contributed over $3,000,000 in total revenue directly to local partner farms during the pandemic.

Denisse Cordova Carrizales (Undergraduate Scholar Award Recipient)

2018 College Scholar, Harvard University

For the past couple of years, Denisse has been working in the Mundy Lab researching quantum materials at the atomic scale, specifically superconductors. In November 2021, “Superconductivity in a quintuple-layer square-planar nickelate,” for which she is a co-author, was published in Nature Materials for the discovery of square-planar nickelates as a new family of superconducting materials. Furthermore, there are two research projects that are currently in the last stages of review where she is a co-author. They are “Antiferromagnetic metal phase in an electron-doped rare-earth nickelate” for publication in Nature Physics, and “Electronic properties of Ndn+1NinO3n+1 Ruddlesden-Popper nickelate thin films” for publication in Physical Review Materials. These three publications explore different aspects of scientific discovery of a square-planar nickelates as a new family of superconducting materials. Climate change, for example, can be ameliorated using renewable fusion energy devices which need powerful superconductors in order to reliably deliver safe and clean energy.

Recently, Denisse has been named a Harvard Quantum Initiative Research Fellow, won the Herschel Smith Award - a research grant for undergraduates identified for their talent and promise as likely contributors to the next generation of scientific research by a Harvard faculty review committee, and will be a co-author on a scientific paper for work she did during 2020 and 2021 at MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Denisse plans to become a scientist and advocate for safe, renewable energy, specifically nuclear fusion energy, for marginalized communities in the face of climate change.

Yanelle Cruz (Levy Prize Recipient)

2017 Undergraduate Transfer, Tufts University; 2020 Graduate Scholar, Oxford University

Yanelle is graduating in September 2022 with her MPhil in Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy from Oxford University and will begin a MSc/DPhil program in Migration Studies, also at Oxford.

Yanelle works with Oxford's Global Centre on Healthcare & Urbanization. This work has led her to publish a report with the Prince’s Foundation, a valuable tool for practitioners and policymakers in the UK, which has which has been presented at several conferences. Yanelle’s thesis research examines the role of sanctuary city policies and the lasting effects of the public charge rule in the lives of immigrants in the US, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to her academic accomplishments, Yanelle is also deeply involved on campus. She was selected as one of sixteen students to sit on the first Postgraduate Consultation Group run by the Oxford Student Union, which serves as the voice for postgraduate students and lobbies on behalf of them. As part of this group, Yanelle engages with various focus groups and committees around the university to share thoughts about the postgraduate experience. Yanelle also serves as the Diversity & Equality Representative in Lincoln College’s MCR (Middle Common Room) Committee. In this role, Yanelle has worked on crucial anti-racism efforts to help make the Lincoln community a more inclusive and equitable space for all.

 
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