Honors and Awards

HSS scholars have been recognized for their research, teaching, and mentoring with a wide range of honors and awards—both from within Caltech and from honorary societies, prestigious fellowships, and other national and international accomplishments.

These pages highlight some of the many achievements of the current HSS faculty. The division awards prizes of its own to outstanding Caltech students and, since 2005, the Francis Bacon Prize to a distinguished scholar in the history of science.

Featured Faculty Research Honor

Katz Wins Career Achievement Award in Political Methodology

The Society for Political Methodology honored Jonathan N. Katz, Kay Sugahara Professor of Social Sciences and Statistics, with its Career Achievement Award for his research into modeling election dynamics. The award is the society’s highest honor and recognizes the “foundational, distinguished and sustained contributions to the field and the Society made by the recipients over their careers.” Among other accomplishments, Katz is known in the field for his work with Nathaniel Beck, professor of politics and public policy at NYU, which corrected a prior method of analyzing data in comparative politics that allowed for more refined and accurate political prognostication.

Read more about Katz’s career and the award More HSS faculty research honors

Featured Teaching or Mentoring Award

Group of eight students and their instructor standing in front of Dabney's north entrance

Postdoctoral Instructor Anna Stielau Honored with HSS Brass Division Award for Teaching

Weisman Postdoctoral Instructor in Visual Culture Anna Stielau received an HSS Brass Division Award for Teaching in December 2024. Since joining HSS in fall 2023, Stielau’s courses on visual culture, race, and activism have bolstered the division’s visual culture offerings and, in the process, contributed to the development of the visual literacy, thinking and writing skills, and social conscience of the Caltech students. The student course evaluations reflect a common feeling that Stielau has helped change how those in her classes “see” the world, indicating that what is discussed and imparted in the classroom inspires a new sense of agency and responsibility beyond it.
Left: Stielau (back row, center) with the students in her fall 2024 Representation Matters? class

More teaching and mentoring award winners

Student Prizes

Announcing the 2024 HSS Student Prizewinners

The Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to present its prize recipients for the 2023–2024 academic year.

Read article about 2024 HSS Prizewinners More HSS student prizewinners

HSS Honors and Awards