Four Students Recognized for Research Excellence with the 2026 Undergraduate Library Research Prize
The annual award celebrates undergraduate students across disciplines who demonstrate exceptional research skills through strategic use of Library resources
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What connects obesity, microbes and cancer progression? Do the tools we use to measure healthy eating reflect diverse communities? How does the media narrative around Asian American student activism diverge from the historical record? Can a new mathematical framework solve a longstanding optimization challenge? This year's four Undergraduate Library Research Prize (ULRP) recipients tackled these questions through rigorous scholarship, strategic use of Library resources and the kind of intellectual curiosity that defines UC San Diego research.
The award is co-sponsored by UC San Diego Library, UC San Diego Alumni and the Undergraduate Research Hub, and recognizes students for their thoughtful engagement with Library collections, expertise and services throughout the research process.
"Behind every great research project is an ecosystem of people and resources that helps make discovery possible,” said Dani Brecher Cook, Associate University Librarian for Learning and User Experience at UC San Diego Library. “The Library is proud to provide that foundation for undergraduate researchers across every discipline."
Awards were presented at a special recognition ceremony at Geisel Library on May 27, 2026. All honorees had their work published in eScholarship, the University of California’s open access platform. Winners in each category also received a $1,000 cash prize.
Meet the 2026 Undergraduate Library Research Prize Recipients
Life and Health Sciences
Omar Mokhashi (He/Him)
- Project: Obesity-Related Microbial Dysbiosis as a Potential Modulator of Tumour Progression
- Nominated by: Adjunct Associate Professor Weg Ongkeko, Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery
- Neurobiology major, John Muir College, Class of 2027
The Microbes Hiding Inside Tumors
Omar Mokhashi set out to answer a deceptively simple question: what's happening at the molecular crossroads of obesity and cancer? Digging into large-scale genomic data across five tumor cohorts, he identified microbial signatures inside tumors that correlate with patient survival and inflammatory signaling — a finding that could inform future approaches to assessing cancer risk and understanding treatment response.
Omar leaned on the Library at every turn: a deep literature review revealed a gap in the field — the lack of data connecting intra-tumoral microbes to inflammatory pathways across multiple cancer types — and the Library's data tutorials helped him develop the statistical programming skills needed to run survival models and visualize complex biological patterns. He even used primary literature to stress-test his own methods, cross-validating his approach to filtering out sequencing artifacts that can quietly distort genomic results.
Committed to making his findings widely accessible, Omar published his work open access in “Access Microbiology” through the Library's transformative agreement with the Microbiology Society, and made his datasets freely available — a deliberate choice, he said, to reach the communities disproportionately affected by the obesity-cancer connection.
“Omar used library-supported scholarship to move from a broad concern about obesity and cancer toward a focused hypothesis. This independent development of the research question was one of the defining strengths of his work.”
Life and Health Sciences Honorable Mention
Tamanna Gandhi (She/Her)
- Project: Assessment of Health Dietary Patterns that Promote Cardiovascular Health in South Asian Immigrants
- Nominated by: Professor and Dean Cheryl A. M. Anderson, Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science
- Human Biology major, Thurgood Marshall College, Class of 2028
Rethinking "Heart-Healthy" for Immigrant Communities
Tamanna Gandhi explored a critical gap in cardiovascular health research: whether commonly used dietary indices adequately account for the foods, fats and spices of South Asian immigrant communities — a population that experiences a disproportionately high burden of cardiovascular disease. So she put the DASH diet, the Mediterranean diet and the Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index under the microscope to examine how well these widely used frameworks reflect the dietary patterns and cultural contexts of this population.
Tamanna wove Library resources into every phase of the work, starting with the UC Love Data Week workshop "Introduction to Public Health Data," where she learned to analyze national surveillance data like NHANES. From there, she used the Library's A-Z Databases to master Medical Subject Headings searches across PubMed, Embase and CINAHL, refining her searches beyond broad demographic categories to intentionally center on South Asian cohorts. She then utilized the Library’s STEM General Research Guide to trace citations back to the studies behind each index's scoring system. Her analysis identified the Healthful Plant-Based Diet Index as the most culturally relevant model among those examined for this population, offering insight into how public health tools can be adapted to better reflect diverse communities.
“Tamanna developed skills to move beyond summarizing literature to critically analyzing study design, extracting key information, and evaluating cultural relevance. This reinforced research as an active process of inquiry rather than a passive review.”
Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities
Meilani Hollenbeck (She/Her)
- Project: "Bridge or Wedge": Asian Americans and the Affirmative Action Debate in Higher Education
- Nominated by: Associate Professor Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, Department of History
- History major, Eleanor Roosevelt College, Class of 2026
Reconstructing the Historical Record on Student Activism
Meilani Hollenbeck examined the gap between how the media portrayed Asian American University of California students during debates over the consideration of race in university admissions decisions and how these students responded to policy changes from the the late 1970s to the early 2000s.
Working with the Library’s Social Sciences Collections Strategist and the Reference and Instruction Coordinator, Hollenbeck built a foundation of primary sources to explore the history of affirmative action and Asian American student activism. Using Library databases including Westlaw, Nexis Uni and HeinOnline, she uncovered influential legislation, court proceedings and newspaper archives, then cross-referenced those sources with UC San Diego History digital collections and UCSD Student Newspapers digital collections to better understand both media narratives and student experiences.
Recognizing the limitations of mainstream media coverage and identifying critical gaps in information, Hollenbeck turned to library archives to access additional firsthand accounts, including oral histories in the Generating and Reclaiming our Wisdoms (GROW) digital archive, and conducted her own interviews with current UC students. These sources helped her place contemporary affirmative action debates in historical context while challenging simplified narratives about Asian American experiences and perspectives in higher education.
"I remember how excited Meilani was to explore the Generating and Reclaiming Our Wisdoms (GROW) Collection of AAPI Community Stories. This material deeply influenced how she approached her own oral histories with current UCSD Asian American students."
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Shiven Hu (He/Him)
- Project: A Hybrid Explicit-Implicit Gradient Descent Ascent Framework for Nonconvex-Nonconcave Min-Max Optimization
- Nominated by: Professor Jiawang Nie, Department of Mathematics
- Applied Mathematics major, John Muir College, Class of 2027
A New Framework for a Complex Optimization Challenge
Shiven Hu tackled one of the thornier problems in optimization theory: how to find stable solutions in nonconvex-nonconcave min-max problems, where standard gradient methods can struggle to find stable solutions. Using MathSciNet, IEEE Xplore and the ACM Digital Library, he traced the evolution of key ideas through citation chaining and close comparative analysis of conference proceedings and mathematical literature, identifying critical gaps in existing approaches and developing a new hybrid framework to address them.
When his proofs hit snags, he returned to specialized journal literature to refine his reasoning, resolve logical inconsistencies and strengthen the theoretical foundation of his work, illustrating the persistence and iterative problem-solving at the heart of scholarly research. Professor Jiawang Nie, Department of Mathematics, said Shiven's "keen observation skills and in-depth conceptual understanding are truly remarkable" for a student still early in his academic career.
"Shiven's ability to combine mathematical theory with computational techniques highlights his potential as a researcher and problem-solver."
This year’s submissions were evaluated by librarians Adele Barsh, Jeffery Loo, Michelle Mascaro, Zemirah Ngow and Amanda Roth.
To be considered for the award, students must be nominated by a faculty member and present their work at research events such as the Undergraduate Research Conference or the Summer Research Conference. Projects completed for course credit are also eligible.
For more information, visit lib.ucsd.edu/ulrp.
Read more news about: Alumni, School of Arts and Humanities, UC San Diego Library, Physical Sciences, School of Medicine, The Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science
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