The Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) this week honored three junior faculty members for scholarly achievements in their respective fields.
Priyasha Mukhopadhyay, an assistant professor of English, received the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize, which recognizes outstanding scholarship in the humanities. Samuel McDougle, an assistant professor of psychology, and Junliang Shen, an assistant professor of mathematics, each received The Arthur Greer Memorial Prize, which honors work in the social or natural sciences.
“I’m delighted to celebrate Priyasha, Sam, and Junliang for their outstanding scholarly work,” said Steven Wilkinson, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Their groundbreaking research on the literary history of South Asia, human cognition, and algebraic geometry represents the excellent work being done by our colleagues across the FAS.
“I am grateful to work with such an outstanding community of scholars and teachers.”
A description of each winner’s accomplishments, shared in a message to the community on June 10, is below:
Samuel ’60 and Ronnie ’72 Heyman Prize
The prize recognizes outstanding scholarly publications or research by a ladder faculty member in the humanities who is untenured at the time that the work is completed or published.
Priyasha Mukhopadhyay, Department of English
“Mukhopadhyay was awarded the Heyman prize in recognition of her insightful book, ’Required Reading: The Life of Everyday Texts in the British Empire.’ Mukhopadhyay is a scholar of the literary history of South Asia. In Required Reading, Mukhopadhyay combs through the archives of colonial South Asia to examine commonplace writing such as manuals, magazines, and almanacs to challenge our ideas of what ‘reading’ is.”
Arthur Greer Memorial Prize
The Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication or Research recognizes outstanding research conducted by ladder faculty members in the social or natural sciences, broadly construed, who are untenured at the time that the work is completed or published.
Samuel McDougle, Department of Psychology
“Samuel McDougle was awarded the Greer Prize in recognition of his groundbreaking work at the interface of cognition and action, which is reshaping the field’s understanding of motor behaviors with deep implications more broadly for human cognition. In 2024, he was awarded the Early Career Award by The Society for the Neural Control of Movement in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field.”
Junliang Shen, Department of Mathematics
“Junliang Shen was awarded the Greer Prize in recognition of his innovative research, which uses tools from algebraic geometry to solve questions and conjectures rooted in topology, geometry, and mathematical physics. Shen was previously recognized for this work by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with the 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship in mathematics.”
