Student Awards 2022 awarded to Chiara Lacroix and Kimia Milani Sabzewar
Today, during the Start of the Academic Year, vice-President Margot van the Starre presented the Student Awards. The Award for Best Master's Thesis went to Chiara Lacroix. In her thesis, she examined how the concept of man and humanity develops in medical literature. The Award for Exceptional Extracurricular Achievements was awarded to Kimia Milani Sabzewar, for a wide range of social achievements, including the establishment of the Abadi Foundation, a foundation to support refugees.
Chiara Lacroix, winner Best Master's Thesis 2022
Chiara has pored over huge piles of English and French medical literature to find a pattern in how humans are considered in relation to time. Despite the clinical texts on reproduction in all its facets, a beautiful picture emerged: how over the centuries the awareness of what can be considered human changed, as did the concept of 'humanity'. Not only biological research, but also culture and history have (had) an influence on how man is described and considered.
All this comes together in a beautiful thesis that the jury unanimously admired as original, well written and hard work.
Kimia Milani Sabzewar, Winner Exceptional Extracurricular Achievements Award
Kimia is fully committed to supporting refugees with her founded Abadi Foundation. With this foundation, she organises activities for children in AZCs and reception centres to help them with the process of becoming fluent in the language, processing trauma, leisure activities and development. The jury finds it admirable that Kimia is committed to a global problem that is bigger than herself.
With her commitment to more inclusiveness in health care and her work as a triage operator during the coronary crisis to solve staff shortages, the social merit is very diverse and of an extremely high level. The jury is pleased to see that Kimia has set up a foundation to make her initiative sustainable and hopes that in this way many more refugee children will be helped.
About the student awards
Utrecht University is proud of its students who achieve something remarkable, either as part of their studies or elsewhere in their lives. Each year during the opening of the academic year, the Rector Magnificus therefore presents two Student Awards.
This year, besides prize winner Chiara Lacroix, also Niels Drost (Tsar-struck: How Vladimir Putin uses the history of the Russian Empire) and Sophie ten Hietbrink (Nanoplastic distribution in the North Atlantic subtropical gyre) were nominated for the Best Master’s Thesis. Other nominees for the Exceptional Extracurricular Achievements 2020 were Marloes Lucas Luyck, Lotte Toet, Giulia Hietink and Isa Steijn van Stichting GELIJKSPEL and Renate Bosman. Read more about these nominations.