Accolades and Awards

Every year, the achievements and contributions of our graduate students are recognised at the Graduate Student Townhall in the form of various student awards presented. 

Outstanding Thesis Award

The Outstanding Thesis Award selects exemplary thesis and research work that demonstrates extensive original research and has impactful contributions to their field.

Design Practice Award

The Design Practice Award selects thesis and research work that demonstrate exceptional application of design concepts, methodology and innovation in solving the hypothesis/-es posed in the dissertation.

Inter-disciplinary Innovation Award

The Inter-disciplinary Innovation Award selects thesis and research work that demonstrate new areas of knowledge application involving synergies between two or more disciplines.

Social Innovation Award

The Social Innovation Award selects thesis and research work that strives to create a positive impact on the environment and the people by innovative means.

Best Thesis Award (Pillar Awards)

The Best Thesis Award selects exemplary thesis and research work from each Pillar that demonstrates extensive original research and has impactful contributions to their field.

Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award

The Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award recognises deserving graduate students for the outstanding work done during their Teaching Assistantship.

Graduate Student Service Award

The Graduate Student Service Award is presented to members of the Graduate Student Association for the contributions they made to the graduate community.

For more information on the awards, please contact gradoffice@sutd.edu.sg.

2024 Student Award Winners

At the Graduate Student Townhall held on 24 July 2024, the following achievements and contributions by our graduate students were recognised. Congratulations to all award winners!



Outstanding Thesis Award (Year 2021)

  • Dr Guo Zhijiang (ISTD) - Thesis Title: Learning with Graphs in Natural Language Processing
  • Dr Ludovica Tomarchio (ASD) - Thesis Title: Exploring the relationship between social media and art venues in Singapore
  • Dr Nguyen Tan Thai Hung (ESD) - Thesis Title: On the Value of Paleo-Reconstructed Data: Understanding Long-Term Hydroclimatic Variability and Its Implications to Water Resources Management


Outstanding Thesis Award (Year 2022)

  • Dr Cheuk Kin Wai (ISTD) - Thesis Title: From Supervised to Unsupervised and Single to Multi-Instrument Automatic Music Transcription
  • Dr John Chan You En (EPD) - Thesis Title: Structural Colour Prints Encoded with Rotation and Observation Angle-Dependent Information
  • Dr Xu Xiansong (SMT) - Thesis Title: Typicality In Nonequilibrium Quantum Spin Systems

Chen Zihan (Research Fellow, ISTD) receiving award on behalf of Dr Xu Xiansong (Outstanding Thesis Award - Year 2022); Dr John Chan You En (Outstanding Thesis Award - Year 2022).

Outstanding Thesis Award (Year 2023)

  • Dr Hong Shu (ESD) - Thesis Title: Game-Theoretic Analysis of Privacy Preservation in Networked Systems
  • Dr Lai Weijia Joel (SMT) - Thesis Title: Brownian ratchet-inspired phenomena in Complex Systems: Quantum and Sociodynamical Parrondo’s paradox
  • Dr Matheus Eduardo Garbelini (ISTD) - Thesis Title: Directed Stateful Fuzzing of Wireless Protocols

Dr Matheus Eduardo Garbelini (Outstanding Thesis Award - Year 2023); Dr Lai Weijia Joel (Outstanding Thesis Award - Year 2023)

Graduate Student Service Award

  • Merna Alzurikat
  • Naresh Kumar Thanigaivel
  • Praveen Govindarajan
  • Carina Cecilia Carrasco Camara

Merna Alzurikat, GSA President; Naresh Kumar Thanigaivel, GSA General Secretary Carina Cecilia Carrasco Camara, GSA Events Director; Praveen Govindarajan, GSA Events Director.


3MT People's Choice Award Winner

  • Simon Erick Wredh (PhD/EPD)
2020 Student Award Winners

The successful run of our first virtual Graduate Town Hall was held on 9 April 2021, where we had the opportunity to celebrate our graduate students’ achievements. A series of Awards were presented to recognise the exceptional work from our Master and PhD graduate students. Congratulations to all award winners!


(View the 2020 Student Winners presentation deck for more details)

Graduate Student Service Award 2020

  • John Chan You En (EPD)
  • Lim Sze Li Harry (EPD)
  • Yvonne Wong (ASD)
  • Koh En Yan (ISTD)
  • Elif Esra Aydin (ASD)
  • Suhaila Zainal Shah (HASS)

Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award 2020

  • Yohei Kato (ASD)
  • Kamya Nagarajan (EPD)
  • Tenzin Chan (ISTD)

Best Thesis Award 2020 (Pillar Awards)

  • Lu Guo (EPD) - Thesis title: Rational Materials Design for Faradaic Mechanism driven Capacitive Desalination - An Energy Efficient solution
  • Barnabé Monnot (ESD) - Thesis title: Efficiency, Regret and Inequality in Decentralised Systems
  • Jie Zhanming (ISTD) - Thesis title: Leveraging Dependency Trees for Structured Prediction
  • Wu Weikang (SMT) - Thesis title: Symmetry-Protected Novel Topological  Semimetals/Metals
  • Yeow Lih Wei (ESD) - Thesis title: Assessing Real-World Fuel Consumption and CO2 Emissions of Commercial Road Vehicles using GPS, On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) and Payload Data

Inter-Disciplinary Innovation & Social Innovation Award

  • Barnabé Monnot (ESD) - Thesis title: Efficiency, Regret and Inequality in Decentralised Systems

Design Practice Award

  • Shane Kyi Hla Win (EPD) - Thesis title: Design, Development and Control of Samara-inspired Autorotating Wings for Aerial Payload Deployment

Outstanding Thesis Award

  • Wu Weikang (SMT) - Thesis title: Symmetry-Protected Novel Topological  Semimetals/Metals
2019 Student Award Winners

At the Graduate Student Townhall held on 8 November 2019, the following achievements and contributions by our graduate students were recognised. Congratulations to all award winners!



Graduate Student Service Award 2019

  • Song Wenjian M Ridhuan
  • Lau Jun Liang
  • Koh En Yan  
  • Chau Zhong Hoo

Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award 2019

  • Sujithra Raviselvam (EPD)
  • Nguyen Tan Thai Hung (ESD)
  • Sakshi Sunil Udeshi (ISTD)
  • Xing Bo (SMT)

Social Innovation Award

  • Gowtham Subramanian (EPD) - Thesis title: Exploiting Chemically Induced Phenotypes To Unravel Plasmodium Egress For Therapeutic Development

Inter-Disciplinary Innovation and Design Practice Award

  • Dong Weiling (EPD) - Thesis title: Application of phase change materials in photonic devices

Best Dissertation Award

  • Meysam Sadeghi Googhari (EPD) - Thesis title: Multicast Transmission in 5G: The Era of Massive MIMO Multicasting
2018 Student Award Winners

At the Graduate Student Townhall held on 5 October 2018, the following achievements and contributions by our graduate students were recognised.

Student Service Award

  • Katherine Fennedy
  • Alok Patra
  • Lau Jun Liang
  • Sophia Chan
  • Kranthi Bannuru
  • Thilini Cooray
  • Verina Cristie


Best Teaching Assistant Excellence Award

  • Tan Chee How (EPD) 
  • Chuadhry Mujeeb Ahmed (ISTD) 
  • Barnabe Monnot (ESD)

University Best Dissertation Award

  • Shijun Liang (EPD) - Thesis title: Electron Emission and Transport at Graphene-based Interface and Devices
  • Thomas Wortmann (ASD) - Thesis title: Efficient, Visual, and Interactive Architectural Design Optimization with Model-based Methods

Inter-disciplinary Innovation Award

  • George Chen Fengrong (EPD) - Thesis title: Integrated Optics Devices for Next Generation Communications and High Performance Computing

Design Practice Award

  • Thomas Wortmann (ASD) - Thesis title: Efficient, Visual, and Interactive Architectural Design Optimization with Model-based Methods

Best Dissertation (Pillar) Award

  • Thomas Wortmann (ASD) - Thesis Title: Efficient, Visual, and Interactive Architectural Design Optimization with Model-based Methods
  • Shijun Liang (EPD) - Thesis Title: Electron Emission and Transport at Graphene-based Interface and Devices
  • Harald Bernhard (ESD) - Thesis Title: Large Deviations, Congested Queues, Large Games, and Congested Avenues
  • Yang Jie (ISTD) - Thesis Title: Deep Sequence Models for Lexical Analysis and Entity Detection

Best Master's Thesis (Pillar) Award

  • Yadunund Vijay (EPD) - Thesis Title: Advanced Manufacturing with Natural Materials
  • Gabriella Ricart (ESD) - Thesis Title: Urban Freight Trip Generation (FTG) analysis for Retail Malls in Singapore

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