Forty-Eight Seniors Inducted Into Phi Beta Kappa

UPDATED: December 7, 2015, at 1:25 p.m.

Forty-eight Harvard seniors have been elected to the College's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, joining the 24 members of the Class of 2016 who were selected for the honor society this spring.

Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest undergraduate honor society in the United States, and selects inductees who have demonstrated academic excellence as well as difficulty and variety of course load based on transcripts and official recommendations from Harvard advisors.

The new members were inducted during a ceremony on Wednesday. Their names were released Friday by Jeffrey Berg, assistant director at the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. This year’s Senior 48 hail from all 12 of Harvard’s houses, with the strongest contingent from Mather House at eight.

For many, the news came as a culmination — and an official acknowledgement of — years of hard work.

“I’ve taken a lot of upper level Latin and Greek courses, and I finally felt that all the hours I had been pouring over ancient texts, reading all this commentary on classic authors, I finally felt that that was sort of recognized by the University,” said Tyler A. Dobbs ’16 of Lowell house, who was the only Classics concentrator to receive the election this year.

“I love the ancients, I think they have a lot of wisdom to offer us today,” Dobbs said. “I’m very happy to promote them and represent them in PBK.”

Some students, like Audrey B. Carson ’16, a Government concentrator from Kirkland House, said that induction into the chapter was “humbling.”

“These are people I might never see on campus—we come from all different houses, all different concentrations,” Carson said. “To have this group pulled together, people that have really committed to their studies, that are passionate about their concentrations, is really special.”

The induction ceremony “felt like a high-powered bunch,” she added.

“I think that a lot of people at Harvard deserve something like this, so I feel lucky,” said Ramya Rangan ’16, a Computer Science concentrator from Currier House.

Economics was the most widely represented concentration among this year’s inductees, whose distribution across concentrations is roughly proportional to overall numbers of concentrators in each field.

“It was exciting for me to have been selected to be to be a member of PBK with some of my closest friends from the Economics concentration,” said Auden S. Laurence ’16, an Economics concentrator from Adams House. “That was a real honor and a special moment to be inducted with two of them.”

A complete list of the members of the Class of 2015 elected to the ‘Senior 48’ is below:

Caitlin E. Andrews, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (Cabot)

Lane B. Baker, History (Quincy)

Jessica A. Barzilay, History of Science (Dunster)*

Sasha R. Benov, Linguistics (Winthrop)

Amir Bitran, Physics (Pforzheimer)

Emily J. Caputo, Economics (Mather)

Audrey B. Carson, Government (Kirkland)

Ishan Chatterjee, Electrical Engineering (Adams)

Pamela Chen, Human and Evolutionary Biology (Adams)

Sitan Chen, Mathematics (Adams)

Matthew J. Disler, Social Studies (Mather)

Katherine A. Divasto, Psychology (Adams)

Tyler A. Dobbs, Classics (Lowell)

Kevin B. Einkauf, Neuroscience (Currier)

Nikki D. Erlick, Comparative Literature (Mather)*

Sierra Q. Fan, Economics (Leverett)

Grace K. T. Hansen-Gilmour, Romance Languages and Literature (Lowell)

Alexander T. Hassan, Engineering Sciences (Lowell)

David T. Haswell, Statistics (Kirkland)

Will E. Holub-Moorman, History* (Kirkland)

Rivka B. Hyland, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Lowell)

Angie Jo, History of Art and Architecture (Adams)

Auden S. Laurence, Economics (Adams)

Michelle S. Lee, Anthropology (Mather)*

Zach J. Lustbader, Statistics (Mather)

Irfan Mahmud, Economics (Winthrop)*

Nathan J. Manohar, Computer Science (Eliot)

Nat K. Mayer, Mathematics (Winthrop)

Andre Nguyen, Applied Mathematics (Pforzheimer)

Iyeyinka A. Omigbodun, Anthropology (Eliot)

Andy F. O’Rourke, Engineering Sciences (Currier)

Grant W. Parisi, Economics (Cabot)

Luis A. Perez, Computer Science (Leverett)

Anchisa Pongmanavuth, Economics (Mather)

Arifeen S. Rahman, Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology (Winthrop)

Ikaika Ramones, Anthropology (Cabot)

Ramya Rangan, Computer Science (Currier)

Hassaan Shahawy, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Mather)

Olivier Simon, Physics (Currier)

Ben L. Sobel, Comparative Literature (Lowell)

Rachel M. Tandias, Chemistry (Kirkland)

Amy Zeng, Economics (Currier)

David B. Song, Social Studies (Cabot)

Viviane Valdes, Psychology (Dunster)

Milly Wang, Economics (Mather)

Joanna Q. Weng, Economics (Eliot)

Sandy Wong, Chemical and Physical Biology (Quincy)

Magdalene M. Zier, History and Literature (Quincy)

*Asterisks denote active or inactive Crimson editors.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: December 7, 2015

An earlier version of this article misstated the concentration of Magdalene M. Zier. She studies History and Literature, not History.

—Staff writer Emma K. Talkoff can be reached at emmatalkoff@college.harvard.edu.