Join us in congratulating two CS undergraduate students, Prakrati A. Kadekar and Yash Chennawar, on being named Henry Rutgers Scholar Award recipients!
The Henry Rutgers Scholar Award recognizes graduating seniors and exceptional juniors who have completed outstanding independent research projects leading to a thesis in their major field of study or an interdisciplinary thesis. These awards are offered across all departments of the School of Arts and Sciences and represent the finest achievements of our students.
Prakrati A. Kadekar was awarded the Henry Rutgers Scholar Award for her thesis “Designing a Generative AI Writing Revision Tool to Preserve Student Critical Thinking.” During the 2025–2026 Academic Year, Prakrati carried out an interdisciplinary honors thesis under the joint mentorship of Assistant Teaching Professor Carla Caponegro in the English Department Writing Program and Professor Matthew Stone in the Computer Science Department. Prakrati went on to build a web tool that used generative AI APIs to take student writing, instructor feedback, and her prompts and deliver custom feedback to students. To assess this work, she conducted a formative evaluation with current college writing students, which required obtaining a Rutgers IRB-approved protocol and contacting current instructors to help recruit participants.
“I'm honored to be recognized as a Henry Rutgers Scholar for a thesis that is deeply meaningful to me. My work focused on how we can develop an AI tool that helps students revise their writing without taking away their ownership or critical thinking. It means a lot to know that work grounded in preserving student voice is being recognized.”
Yash Chennawar was awarded the Henry Rutgers Scholar Award for his research, which focuses on advancing intelligent systems through interdisciplinary artificial intelligence (AI) research under the mentorship of Professor Konstantinos P. Michmizos and Professor Aaron Milstein from the Department of Neuroscience and Biology at RWJ Medical School. Through this work, he became a co-author on a peer-reviewed publication in Cell Reports on biologically inspired neural network architectures that improve how deep learning models assign and propagate learning signals.
“As a junior studying Computer Science, Data Science, and Mathematics in Honors College, I was pleasantly surprised to be named a Henry Rutgers Scholar. Since my freshman year, I’ve worked in Professor Milstein’s lab researching brain-inspired neural networks, exploring how principles of biological neurons can inform the design and training of AI systems. That work eventually led to a co-authored publication, and it would not have been possible without the technical foundation and mentorship I found in the Rutgers CS program. This recognition means a lot to me because it reflects years of work, I’ve been deeply invested in, and the opportunity Rutgers gave me to turn curiosity into meaningful research.”
This prestigious award includes a $1,000 prize and special recognition at the School of Arts and Sciences Convocation.