🏆 The Princeton Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence

This fall, I am incredibly honored to have received the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence for 2024-25!

This award recognizes the top 3% of first and second-year undergraduates at Princeton University for outstanding academic achievement and deep engagement in their studies. Selection takes into account “the breadth and depth of each student's academic program,” as well as “intellectual engagement, academic exploration and risk-taking, as well as the student's cumulative GPA.” I am truly grateful to the faculty members and mentors who have inspired and supported me throughout my Princeton journey so far.

At the celebratory reception and lecture on September 30th, 2025, each residential college recognized its recipients individually before the evening’s guest speaker, Professor of Computer Science Arvind Narayanan, delivered a compelling talk on AI and its social impacts. As the co-author of his recent book, AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference, Prof. Narayanan has conducted extensive research on the matter, and he addressed the students’ questions, concerns, dreams, and speculations with remarkable clarity, honesty, and poise. He emphasized that AI is a tool that must be understood and used thoughtfully, not a sentient, doom-bringing replacement for humanity.

It seems that AI is now inevitable in our society. What matters is not avoiding it, but ensuring that it supports, not hinders, our creative process or modes of expression expression.

I left the event with a copy of the book in hand, excited to continue refining my knowledge, my thinking process, and my perspective on the world.