73 Harvard Undergrads Win 2024 Hoopes Prize for Senior Theses

Logan C. Kelly ’24 was in the Winthrop Dining Hall eating lunch with his “oldest friend at Harvard” when he glanced at his phone and saw he had won the Hoopes Prize.

“I saw an email from the FAS Prize Committee, and it said on the subject line — 2024 Hoopes Prize. And then my jaw just kind of dropped, like I was getting into Harvard again,” Kelly, who wrote his thesis in Social Studies, said.

“I dreamed of it as a freshman, but I couldn’t have imagined it even two years ago — I felt like it was out of reach and that I just wasn’t a good enough student to achieve it,” he added.

The Hoopes Prize — awarded to 73 Harvard College seniors this year — is annually conferred in recognition of outstanding scholarly research from undergraduate students. The prize is funded by the estate of Thomas T. Hoopes, Class of 1919, for the purpose of “promoting, improving, and enhancing the quality of education.”

Student winners are awarded $5,000, and the faculty advisers of winning projects are awarded $2,000 for supporting students. Each winning thesis is bound and available in Lamont Library for two years before being shipped to the student.

Susan L. Lively, secretary of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote in a statement to The Crimson that she hopes students interested in the Hoopes prize “will take the opportunity to read this year’s winning projects.”

“The Hoopes Prize represents Harvard College at its very best,” Lively added. “The range and quality of this year’s winning projects are a testament to the hard work and talent of both the students who produced the theses and the faculty who advised them.”

Tomi O. Siyanbade ’23-’24, a Molecular and Cellular Biology concentrator whose thesis focused on developing diagnostics for Lassa fever, said she found out she won the Hoopes award when her friend texted her a PDF of the winners from this year.

“My friend actually texted me ‘HOOPES’ in all capital letters. He’s also a graduating senior, so I didn’t really know if he was just trying to flex on me or something,” Siyanbade said.

“The prize itself — it’s nice,” she added. “I’m definitely gonna go buy myself a lobster roll, but I don’t think that specifically impacts my future plans.”

LyLena D. Estabine ’24, a Sociology concentrator who researched urban planning in Chicago, said she found out she received the Hoopes right before her thesis advisor’s dissertation defense.

“It was so funny,” she said. “Right before she started her presentation, I opened my email really quickly, and I saw the congratulations email from the Hoopes Prize. I closed it really quickly because she was about to present and finish her doctoral degree, but I was so excited.”

“I just was flooded with a sense of gratitude to God,” Estabine said.

Estabine’s research started the summer before her senior year, when she traveled to Chicago to learn about the relationship between community engagement among residents and the design of a city’s physical infrastructure.

“I lived in the city of Chicago this summer for a couple of months, and throughout those months, I did some ethnographic work,” Estabine said.

“I attended community meetings across the city of Chicago,” she added. “I shadowed at an urban planning firm for that period, and then before that period and also after I left Chicago, I conducted about 29 in-depth interviews with residents, planners and community organizers.”

Jai K. Khurana ’24, a History of Science concentrator who wrote his thesis on the field of pain medicine, went to the University of California, Los Angeles for part of his thesis research, where he examined archives about the history of pain.

Staying with a friend, Khurana said he spent weeks in “a dusty room, looking through archival papers in a basement, really exercising the history of science methods that we’re often taught to use in our different tutorials,” he said.

Khurana said his thesis approached the opioid epidemic through the understanding that “a lot of the doctors who are involved in the pain movement to get pain treated really care about patients.”

“Over time, they — towards this mission — started to compromise on important ethics and values because they really wanted to gain legitimacy, autonomy, public attention,” he said. “Those enduring values turned what was a medical society into what, I argue, became a movement.”

While some Hoopes recipients were delighted to hear the news, Shelby N. Tzung ’24 said her reaction became more subdued throughout the day.

“I think my reaction has been a bit muted throughout the day just because I happened to have a Social Studies thesis presentation colloquium today as well,” said Tzung, a Social Studies concentrator who wrote her thesis on artists’ sense of agency in Hong Kong.

“I was sitting there listening to all of my peers present their amazing theses and just thinking, ‘I don’t know how I got lucky enough to have received the Hoopes because I think everyone did insanely phenomenal work,’” Tzung said.

Tzung, who conducted field work in Hong Kong last summer, said winning the Hoopes was a testament to her ability to interview people in the country despite safety concerns and political constraints.

“My gratification at winning Hoopes is definitely fueled by a feeling of gratitude for the people that I was interviewing,” she said.

For most Hoopes recipients, the prize comes following long hours and late nights put into their projects.

Maycee D. Wieczorek ’24 — whose thesis developed a robotic pulling system to remove potato vine from crops as an alternative to herbicides — said in the week before her final presentation, she spent almost all of her time in the Science and Engineering Complex.

“I think the week leading up to my final presentation I was in the SEC for — I don’t even want to do the math — but it was probably 14 or more hours every single day: working on my prototype, trying to get it to work, modifying things, trying again,” Wieczorek said.

“I knew it was possible for engineers to get the Hoopes, but I really didn’t think that I was going to get it,” she said. “I was really surprised.”

—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.

—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.