Leo Malachowski

We commend Leo Malachowski for his interdisciplinary academics, citing his efforts to merge the knowledge he gains from his studies in electrical engineering and an interest in Space with research in philosophy. Through his participation in the JMHC’s Space Ethics research group, he is developing a research paper analyzing and comparing space resource governance to Locke’s property theory, and has presented his preliminary findings at the JMHC. Additionally, Leo is a long-time, active member of the TREKS research group to strengthen the local community. He has applied his engineering mindset to gathering data from community members via a Quality of Life framework to evaluate neighborhood-level well-being, and co-authored a publication on the research framework and results in Purdue Journal of Service Learning.

Virginia Graziosi

Virginia Graziosi’s work draws from biology, geoscience, and planetary science, and its implications extend from veterinary medicine to astrobiology. She organizes her vision around One Health, a framework that recognizes human, animal, and environmental health as inseparable, and she carries that commitment across her coursework, her research, and her plans for a career that pairs clinical veterinary practice with collaborative scientific discovery. Virginia is pursuing her Animal Sciences education with the conviction that the most consequential scientific questions rarely stay within a single field. Alongside her Chemistry minor, she is a Research Fellow in Purdue's Department of Chemistry, investigating the prebiotic synthesis of complex sugars to understand the molecular conditions that may have preceded life on Earth. She has come to understand, as she puts it, that the best solutions often emerge from the meeting of disciplines.

Yuan Yue

Yuan Yue’s research experience at Purdue, which began in high school, has been instrumental in shaping her commitment to exploring novel solutions to neurological disorders. She currently conducts research in two labs, one in the School of Health Sciences and one in School of Chemical Engineering while majoring in both Neurobiology and Physiology in the Biological Sciences department and Psychology. This means that her academic engagements reach three colleges and four schools/departments at Purdue. Under Dr. Julie Liu, she examined how therapeutics can be delivered past the blood-brain barrier and presented this research at Eli Lilly’s Corporate Center, Purdue Undergraduate Research Expo, and One Health Research Day. In Dr. Oluwaseyi Oderinde’s medical physics laboratory, she has applied radiomic feature extraction to PET and CT imaging to predict therapy response for head and neck cancer, which she presented at the American Association of Physicists in Medicine conference. Through the JMHC, Yuan was introduced to the HEAL research generator, which helped her understand the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in turning biomedical discoveries into commercial therapeutics and contributed to her research path.

Philip Liu

Philip Liu is recognized for his exceptional research experience including presenting and publishing his research nationally. Philip is a computer science major focusing efforts toward deploying AI responsibly. His research has shaped his college experience into a new worldly perspective about the impact one individual can have. In fact, it was through an email about a scholarly project opportunity that Philip found himself connected to this idea and shifting his future plans toward a research career. He is currently an author of three publications and active in two research groups: the Machine Learning and Media Forensics Lab in the School of Applied and Creative Computing and the Lee Memory and Cognition Lab in the Department of Psychological Sciences. His research findings  contribute to AI in medical settings, tools for aphasia rehabilitation, and deepfake detection. Philip’s engagement with JMHC resources has helped him achieve his goal of sharing his work with larger and broader audiences for responsible AI, such as giving a talk at the PURC and his presentation at the International Conference on Multimedia Information Processing and Retrieval in San Jose. 

Louis Delaby

Louis Delaby’s leadership has been exceptional both in terms of vision and practice, with emphasis on resilience and fostering communities for transformational growth. As a founding Co-President of COBALT, he helped launch a new leadership program and was integral in establishing its culture and key organizational processes, elevating outcomes for a 72-member cohort. He also invested great care into mentoring emerging leaders within the program. Across roles in ODK, HonorServes, Heart Club, and the Dean’s Advisory Council, he has made a notable impact in the JMHC and beyond through coaching and advocacy, while exemplifying collaborative and impact-driven leadership.

Isabella Crespo

Isabella’s leadership is defined by intentional coaching, systems-building, and a commitment to sustainable impact. As co-founder and co-chair of the COBALT Coaching Committee, she designed and implemented a peer coaching model, training 12 student leaders and establishing a coaching curriculum to support future cohorts. This work yielded over 400 hours of individual leadership learning. Beyond COBALT, she founded the Boiler Green Organizations Coalition, uniting nearly 20 sustainability groups and establishing structures for long-term collaboration. Through clear communication and a focus on empowering others, she has modelled leadership that endures, multiplies impact, and equips others to succeed.

Anne Mazza

As co-chair for Food Finders Food Bank in HonorServes of the JMHC, Anne Mazza started an initiative for the group to volunteer on a regularly basis at Food Finders’ local Fresh Market. She organized volunteers and consistently volunteers herself. As a result, Anne and the group have built an institutional relationship between Food Finders and the JMHC. At the same time, her presence at Food Finders built relationships between herself and Food Finders, fellow community volunteers, and even the clients. As Anne stated in her application, “What began as service transformed into connection, but also genuine bonds with community members themselves.”

Yutika Sawant

Since coming to Purdue, Yutika Sawant has maintained a steadfast focus on creating a more welcoming and internationally-connected environment here in the John Martinson Honors College. As a first-year student, she joined Global House, and over the last three years, she has developed into an innovative leader in the program, serving as an Intercultural Fellow and a GH Leader. In these roles, she manages programming that molds a global perspective in Honors students. She organizes game nights, bringing together students from many different cultures, and recently, she has begun designing International Treasure Boxes with PLaCE, which will immerse students in international experiences through puzzles and other games. Her gaming projects consistently elevate the sense of international camaraderie on campus. Outside of the JMHC, Yutika’s research on thin-film solar cells aims to solve the global energy crisis, and this research has led her to work together with mentors and colleagues in Japan. Yutika’s ongoing efforts to facilitate meaningful connections between students and professionals from across the globe emphasize that the JMHC’s impact is not just an isolated incident, but rather, spread throughout the whole world.

Nate Albin

Nate Albin weaves his knowledge from the humanities (Social Studies and Education, History) with the perspectives and strengths of his peers pursuing STEM and all majors through his coursework and extra-curricular interactions in the JMHC. “Working with people that had different strengths than me helped me learn how to shift perspectives and to empathize more with the experience of others – a skill that I am incredibly thankful to have as an educator.” Many of these interactions were made through his undergraduate research. Nate wrote, filmed, and produced the documentary What about the Fans on the social impact of the demise of a West Coast sporting conference, the Pac-12. He traveled to Las Vegas to capture people of differing communities and backgrounds coming together as a community to share the culture of Pac-12, then shared it with the JMHC community through a premier as a JMHC event. He engaged with the local community through the TREKS research group, merging community engagement with research and leading the content development and delivery for a biannual conference that teaches students in grades 7-12 about service-learning and community principles. Finally, as a JMHC Lead Ambassador, Nate has been an ever-present, shining light who introduces our college to new families, donors and anyone interested in the community that is the JMHC. His enthusiasm, charisma, and thoughtfulness reflect the best of all he has absorbed from the JMHC and will carry him into the future.

Abigail Frank

Abigail Frank leaves Purdue having led a rocketry team of 100 students to two firsts in program history, earned the Brooke Owens Fellowship, interned at NAVAIR and Amazon Project Kuiper, conducted research on three continents, and co-founded COBALT, the Honors College's only leadership-centered living learning community. In its pilot year, COBALT enrolled 70 students and generated over 700 hours of leadership education. What distinguishes Frank is not the accumulation of these achievements but the intentionality behind them; she has consistently worked to build programs and teams that function beyond her presence in them. When she retired as Project Manager of the rocketry team, 75% of incoming leadership was women. She will pursue master's degrees in Bioastronautics and Engineering Management at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she intends to research what it takes for humans to live and work sustainably beyond Earth.

The following students each received an Honorable Mention for their JMHC activity.

• 3^rd Year Leadership Honorable Mention: Jasmine Harper
• 3^rd Year Undergraduate Research and Creative Arts Honorable Mention: Bridget Heindl
• 3^rd Year Interdisciplinary Academics Honorable Mention: Anjali Gupta
• 3^rd Year Community Engagement Honorable Mention: Yutika Sawant
• Outstanding Senior Honorable Mention: Paige Hensley
• Outstanding Senior Honorable Mention: Gabrielle Waterman