Student Highlights Spring 2026
Every year, GHS students continue to impress us with their accomplishments and variety of interests and engagements within and beyond our program. This year is no different!
In 2025-2026, GHS graduated 133 adjunct major and minor students, whose home majors were across the university. Nine of our students were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa (PBK), Alpha of Illinois chapter at Northwestern University. PBK is the nation’s oldest academic honors society, and Northwestern opened the first PBK chapter in Illinois in 1889. Many of these PBK inductees have also achieved many other honors and accomplishments in their undergraduate career. A few highlights from among these PBK recipients:
- Aparnaa Ananthakrishnan received the Navin Narayan Award for Excellence in Youth Leadership, an award through the American Red Cross to celebrate its young volunteers.
- Michael Brouse was selected from among this year’s inductees to PBK for the Centennial Prize, which honors PBK inductees for their additional accomplishments, wide-spanning curiosity, and commitment to service.
- Jason Chen was the 2024-2026 recipient of the Obama-Chesky Voyager Scholarship for Public Service.
- Shinyi Ding (pictured right) was selected as GHS’s student marshal at the Weinberg Commencement Ceremony, in acknowledgement of her many accomplishments
within the program, including publishing original research she conducted under the supervision of Dr. Sarah Rodriguez, and receiving the inaugural 2025 Undergraduate Archival Research Project Prize for that work.
- Jennyfer Park, who participated in Dr. Rodriguez’s fall 2025 study abroad in London and subsequent course, “Maternal Health in the 20th Century” won honorable mention for the Undergraduate Archival Research Project Prize from NU Libraries for her paper, “Defining Midwifery: Standardization, its Challenges, and the Role of TBA’s, from 1961-1980.”
Other GHS students and alumni also achieved great things. GHS student Sydney-Reese Harris was the undergraduate speaker at Northwestern’s 168th Annual Commencement celebration on June 14th at the United Center, inspiring the graduating class to be comfortable with discomfort: “unless you’re uncomfortable, you can’t grow.”
Katelyn Gau (pictured left) presented her research at the 2026 American Association for the History of Medicine Annual Meeting, entitled “Two-Way Dialogues: A Revision to Encompass Local Contexts for TBA Trainings,” and had a poster accepted to the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 11ths entitled the same. Both were based on her research at the Wellcome Archives under supervision of Dr. Rodriguez.
GHS Alumna Rama Darayyad (pictured below), part of our Accelerated Program in Public Health (APHP), won the Best Poster Award at the Public Health Poster session on May 8th for her poster, “Strengthening Continuity of Care for Deaf Refugee Children in Lebanon: A Program Evaluation Initiative with Deaf Defy.” Joining the APHP program this summer are recent GHS graduates Sanjana Shankar (also a PBK recipient), Vrinda Satyavolu, and Hannah Paik, who also received the Northwestern Alumnae Associate Graduate Fellowship. Michael
Brouse, Athena Demeros, and Hermon Welde (PBK recipient) will also join Feinberg next year for medical school.
- JingXi Yap was named a Northwestern Grad to Celebrate for 2026, highlighted in Northwestern Magazine.
- Kidman Ip was awarded the Gilman International Scholarship.
- Louis Lee received the James Dunn Fellowship.
- Hanna Rodriguez received the AChemS Award for Undergraduate Research
- Jhonatan Ojeda Garcia will be doing Fulbright ETA in Mexico
- Caterina Regazzoni will play professional soccer in Europe after graduation
- Ruth Debono will go on to study public health at UIC as an Irving Harris Scholar through their center for excellence for maternal and child health
- Ellen Darmstadter will attend the University of Washington for speech-language pathology in the fall.
To the graduating class of 2026, we give you our heartfelt best wishes on all your future pursuits, and we dearly hope you’ll stay in touch. And for all GHS students, current and former, we wish you a restorative summer and all the best in your future pursuits!