Interim President Larry Jameson announced the winners of the 2024 President's Engagement and President's Innovation Prizes, awarding funding to seven Penn seniors for projects designed to create positive social change.
Created by former Penn President Amy Gutmann in 2015, the prizes are awarded annually to Penn seniors who will undertake post-graduation projects that aim to make a "positive, lasting difference in the world." All prize recipients collaborate with a Penn faculty mentor, and the projects receive up to $100,000 as well as a $50,000 living stipend for each team member.
This year's winners were selected from an applicant pool of 68 students. Five students, comprising two teams, received the President’s Engagement Prize, and two students received the President’s Innovation Prize.
College seniors Simran Rajpal and Gauthami Moorkanat founded Educate to Empower, dedicated to dismantling barriers to breast cancer screenings in marginalized communities through education and resources at community centers based in Philadelphia. Leisha Elmore, an assistant professor of surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine and chief of breast surgery at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, serves as the faculty mentor for this project.
College seniors Anooshey Ikhlas, Brianna Aguilar, and Catherine Hood are implementing the Presby Addiction Care Program, a volunteer program at the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center that confronts challenges encountered by individuals with substance use disorders during hospitalization. The project is mentored by Jeanmarie Perrone, professor of emergency medicine at the Medical School and founding director of the Penn Medicine Center for Addiction Medicine and Policy.
Engineering seniors Yash Dhir and Rahul Nambiar were awarded this year’s President’s Innovation Prize for the online platform Jochi, which aims to improve the educational experience of students with learning differences such as dyslexia and ADHD. Amanda Antico, the capstone director of the Education Entrepreneurship Program at the Graduate School of Education, mentored the two students.
“The 2024 recipients of the President’s Engagement and Innovation Prize all combine the highest levels of academic excellence with strong service-minded missions,” Jameson told Penn Today. “Educate to Empower, Presby Addiction Care Program, and Jochi exemplify Penn’s founding ethos: to pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake and to use it to do good in the world. I congratulate each of our Prize winners and look forward to seeing their ventures thrive.”
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