Carnegie Mellon University

Hugh D. Young Graduate Student Teaching Award

Samson Leung

2023 Award Recipient:

Samson Leung, Department of Mathematical Sciences

Press Release

The Hugh D. Young Graduate Student Teaching Award is given to encourage and recognize effective teaching by graduate students. This award was established in 1995.

Hugh D. Young was a professor of physics at Carnegie Mellon University who devoted much of his life to Carnegie Mellon and its students. He was born on Nov. 3, 1930, in Ames, Iowa, and was raised in Mondamin and Osage, Iowa. He first set foot on Carnegie Mellon’s campus as an undergraduate physics major in 1948, and, by 1959, had earned a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics. He later earned a B.F.A. in music in 1972, concentrating in organ performance.

During his 52-year career teaching physics at Carnegie Mellon, Young was a mainstay of the introductory physics sequence offered by the Physics Department, nurturing it through many changes. Nearly every semester he taught both a large introductory physics course and a second course. Through it all, he introduced more than 18,000 students to the beauty of physics.

For details on guidelines, selection, evaluation and more, please visit the MCS Intranet.

Year Name Department
1995 Elaine Brunsman Kirkpatrick Physics
1996 Joanne Kehlbeck Chemistry
1996 Oliver Lessmann Mathematical Sciences
1997 Gregory Martin Chemistry
1997 Stephen Watson Mathematical Sciences
1998 Shubho Banerjee Physics
1998 Leonard Vuocolo Chemistry
1999 Brian Diggs Physics
2000 Nadine Fattaleh-Diggs Chemistry
2001 Andrew Harey Physics
2002 Aris Winger Mathematical Sciences
2003 Ksenija Simic Mathematical Sciences
2004 Daniel Hennessy Physics
2005 Kelley W. Burgin Mathematical Sciences
2006 Michael Picollelli Mathematical Sciences
2006 Delia-Laura Popescu Chemistry
2007 Andrea Benvin Chemistry
2007 Matthew Szudzik Mathematical Sciences
2008 Robert Aquirre Mathematical Sciences
2009 Benjamin Beppler Physics
2010 Sam Rauhala Physics
2011 Michael Klipper Mathematical Sciences
2012 Brian Kell Mathematical Sciences
2013 Brendan Sullivan Mathematical Sciences
2014 Emily Daniels Weiss Chemistry
2015 Eric Wu Chemistry
2016 Clive Newstead Mathematical Sciences
2017 Siddharth Satpathy Physics
2018 Joseph Briggs Mathematical Sciences
2019 Giovanni Gravina Mathematical Sciences
2020 Antoine Redmond-Tiedrez Mathematical Sciences
2021 Rebecca Rapp Physics
2022 Junichi Koganemaru Mathematical Sciences
2023 Samson (Wang Chi) Leung Mathematical Sciences