Students

Student Awards

The Outstanding Student Presentation Awards (OSPA) are awarded to promote, recognize and reward undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. students for quality research in the geophysical sciences. Each year, sections and focus groups recruit judges to assess and score student oral and poster presentations at meetings. Typically the top 3-5% of presenters in each section/focus group are awarded an OSPA.

AGU student members pursuing an undergraduate, Masters, or doctorate degree are eligible to participate. You must be the lead author of the abstract presented. Postdoctoral researchers are not eligible. During the abstract submission process, students must indicate their interest in participating in order to be considered. Students will then receive additional instructions in late October on how to confirm participation in OSPA. Visit the official AGU OSPA page to find out more details on how to participate.


Please consider volunteering to be an OSPA judge if you are eligible. Volunteer judges are an integral part of the Outstanding Student Presentation Awards. Many AGU students will remember their first OSPA experience fondly thanks to the help and generosity of the judges. To participate, judges may sign up and schedule themselves online.

Past Awardees

2020 Awardees

  • Mohammed Ombadi, UC Irvine
  • Sidian Chen, University of Arizona
  • Robert Chulumsky, University of Waterloo
  • Katherine Swensen, Washington State University Vancouver
  • Azure Fernsler, Kent State University
  • Ronny Meier, ETH Zurich
  • Katrina Rabeler, University of Wisconsin
  • Sam Anderson, University of British Columbia
  • Amelia Grose, University of Notre Dame
  • Stephen Plont, Virginia Tech
  • Jessica Balerna, American University (now at University of South Florida)
  • Andrew Bennett, University of Washington Seattle
  • Danyka Byrnes, University of Waterloo
  • Sarah Alexander, University of Wisconsin

2019 Awardees

  • Aspen Anderson, Simon Fraser University
  • Richard Barnes, University of California Berkeley
  • Carolina Bieri, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
  • Win Cowger, University of California Riverside
  • Julianne Davis, Syracuse University
  • Quercus Hamlin, Michigan State University
  • Mitchell Hastings, University of South Florida
  • Xander Huggins, University of Victoria
  • Sky Jones, Middle Tennessee State University
  • Bolette Badsberg Jensen, University of Copenhagen
  • Elena Leonarduzzi, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich
  • Hyunglok Kim, University of Virginia
  • Cécile Kittel, Technical University of Denmark
  • Ruth Maier, University of Tübingen
  • Samar Minallah, University of Michigan
  • Justine Molron, Université de Rennes 1
  • Jennifer Pensky, University of California Santa Cruz
  • Rich Pauloo, University of California Davis
  • Stefan Ploum, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
  • Charles Scaife, University of Virginia
  • Joel Singley, University of Colorado at Boulder,
  • Brandon Sloan, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
  • Danielle Tijerina, Colorado School of Mines
  • Charlotte Le Traon, Université de Rennes 1
  • Tommaso Trentin, University of Padova
  • Jian Wu, Queen's University
  • Guo Yu, University of Wisconsin Madison
  • lan zeng, North Dakota State University

2018 Awardees

  • Emily Baker, Syracuse University
  • Abby Eurich, Colorado State University
  • Eva Sinha, Stanford University
  • Noelle Patterson, University of California Davis
  • Samantha Karpyshin, University of Alberta
  • Thi Minh Thuy Nguyen, University of Queensland
  • Jane Chui, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Amanda Campbell, Syracuse University
  • William Jesse Hahm, University of California Berkeley
  • Amelia Nelson, Ohio State University
  • Fleford Redoloza, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
  • SDliya Weldegebriel, University of California Berkeley
  • Gianluca Bergami, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich
  • María Teresa Contreras Vargas, University of Notre Dame
  • Kelly Flint, San Diego State University
  • Camille Vautier
  • Atieh Alipour, University of Alabama
  •  Marisol Dominguez, University of Texas at El Paso
  • Crystal Burgess, Syracuse University
  • Emily Fedders, Appalachian State University
  • Anna Apostel, Ohio State University
  • Robert Moak, Clemson University
  • Carolyn Voter, University of Wisconsin Madison
  • Collin Sutton, Auburn University
  • Bruno Aragon, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

2017 Awardees

  • Guadalupe Alvarez Rodriguez, University of Texas at El Paso
  • Elizabeth Phillips, University of Toronto
  • Kristopher Darnell, University of Texas at Austin
  • Sabina Rakhimbekova, University of Western Ontario
  • Mahta Gholizadeh Ansari, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Bonnie McGill, Michigan State University
  • Matthew Kaufman, University of Texas at Austin
  • Farzaneh MahmoodPoorDehkordy, University of Connecticut
  • Shawn Lee, University of Texas at Austin
  • Katherine Markovich, University of California, Davis
  • Sebastian Munoz, University of Texas at Austin
  • David Byrne, University of Oxford
  • Rebecca Liyanage, Imperial College London
  • Anna Merrifield, University of California, San Diego
  • Catherine Kuhn, University of Washington, Seattle
  • Bernardo Trindade, Cornell University
  • Sarah Fletcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Sandra Pool, University of Zurich
  • Yifan Cheng, University of Washington Seattle
  • Dominic Demand Albert Ludwig, University of Freiburg
  • Patricia Gonzales, Stanford University
  • Mejs Hasan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Isabellah von Trapp, University of Montana
  • Kyle Delwiche, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Caitlin Rushlow, Idaho State University

2016 Awardees

2015 Awardees

  • Francisco Guerrero, Oregon State University
  • Kevin Roche, Northwestern University
  • Zeinab Takbiri, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
  • Abby Frazier, University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • Gang Zhao, Texas A&M University
  • David Dralle, University of California Berkeley
  • Natalie Teale, The State University of New Jersey
  • Danielle Grogan, University of New Hampshire
  • Scott Allen, Louisiana State University
  • Faye Jackson, University of Birmingham
  • Skuyler Herzog, Colorado School of Mines
  • Lauren Foster, Colorado School of Mines
  • Kathryn Wheeler, University of Delaware
  • Yumeng Tao, University of California Irvine
  • Bonnie McGill, Michigan State University
  • Lieke Melsen, Wageningen University
  • Tiantian Xiang, Arizona State University
  • Andrea Cominola, Politecnico di Milano
  • Tyler King, Utah State University
  • Maartje Boon, Imperial College London

2014 Awardees

  • Laureline Josset, University of Lausanne
  • Adrien Selles, University Pierre et Marie Curie
  • Matthew Kaufman, University of Texas at Austin
  • Anna Bergstrom, University of Montana
  • Catherine Finkenbiner, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
  • Jaylee Conlin, Arizona State University
  • Camille Ouellet Dallaire, McGill University
  • Zachary Hoylman, University of Montana
  • Maura Allaire, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Joaquim Soler Sagarra, Polytechnic University of Catalonia
  • Kimberly Manago, Colorado School of Mines
  • Jane Chui, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Kevin Befus, University of Texas at Austin
  • Ashley Matheny, Ohio State University
  • Adam Wlostowski, Colorado State University
  • Offer Rozenstein, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
  • Sarah Scarlett, University of Waterloo

2013 Awardees

  • Rose Abramoff, Boston University
  • Masoud Arshadi,  University of  Colorado at Boulder
  • Tania Bakhos, Stanford University
  • Paolo Benettin, University of Padova
  • Cameron Bracken, University of Colorado at Boulder
  • Linyin Cheng, University of  California Irvine
  • Jana von Freyberg, University of Neuchatel
  • John Gardner, University of  Maryland
  • Si Gou, Texas A & M University
  • Jonathan Herman, Cornell University
  • Paul Micheletty, Colorado School of  Mines
  • Kristen Rasmussen, University of  Washington
  • Noah Schmadel, Utah State University
  • Colby Thrash, Clemson University
  • Mohammad Javad Tourian, University of Stuttgart
  • Samuel Tuttle, Boston University

2012 Awardees

  • Sanyogita Andriyas, Utah State University
  • David Cameron, Stanford University
  • Jane Chui, Massachusetts Insitute of Technology
  • Jake Diamond, University of Florida
  • James Dietrich, University of Oregon
  • Xue Feng, Duke University
  • David Hochstetler, Stanford University
  • Dan Li, Princeton University
  • Franziska Moebius, ETH Zurich
  • Phu Nguyen, UC Irvine
  • Nicole Rudolph, University Potsdam, Germany

2011 Awardees

  • Patrick Broxton, University of Arizona
  • Jennifer Druhan, University of California, Berkeley
  • Mohammad Ebtehaj, University of Minnesota
  • Nicholas Engdahl, University of California, Davis
  • Nicholas Haas, State University of New York
  • Kevin Hanley, University of New Hampshire
  • Keith Harding, University of Minnesota
  • Peter Kang, Massachusetts Insitute of Technology
  • Maria Klepikova, Geosciences Rennes
  • John Leeman, University of Oklahoma
  • Jingjing Li, University of California, Irvine
  • Maimuna Majumder, Tufts University
  • Nasrin Nasrollahi, University of California, Irvine
  • Michael Natter, Auburn University
  • Casey Nixon, University of Southampton
  • Yadu Pokhrel, University of Tokyo
  • Andrew Racz, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Gabriel Rau, University of New South Wales
  • Wendy Robertson, University of Texas at Austin
  • Dawn Roberts- Semple, Rutgers University
  • Marilyn Roland, University of Antwerp
  • Philip Saksa, University of California, Merced
  • Keith Sawicz, The Pennsylvania State University
  • Marie Scholer, University of Lausanne
  • William Smith, University of Montana
  • Benjamin Tutolo, University of Minnesota
  • Rohit Warrier, University of Michigan
  • Yipeng Zhang, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
  • Tongtiegang Zhao, Tsinghua University
  • Margaret Zimmer, Syracuse University