ANU Arts students receive gold medals from Irish President
Arts/Law student, Matilda Gillis, is presented with her gold medal from the President of Ireland Mr Michael D. Higgins. Image supplied.
Two ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences students have received international Undergraduate Awards (UA) gold medals from the President of Ireland at a prestigious awards ceremony in Dublin.
Matilda Gillis and Weng Kin San received their awards from Ireland's President Michael Higgins.
Considered a junior Nobel Prize for high-potential undergraduates, the Undergraduate Awards is the world's largest academic awards program to recognise excellent research and original work across the sciences, humanities, business and creative arts.
Matilda, in her fifth year of an Arts/Law degree majoring in political science, was named the overall winner in the UA law category.
"I was really surprised when I got the news. I had been pretty excited to be on the Highly Commended list and then even more so when announced as the Overall Winner for law," Matilda said.
Kin, who was the overall winner in the philosophy and theology category, is in his honours year of an Arts PhB, majoring in philosophy.
"Philosophy is something I care a lot about and hope to do in the future, so it felt great to be validated in some small way," Kin said.
Kin learned about the competition after hearing of fellow CASS student Daniel McKay’s victory in 2014. McKay was awarded the overall winner for History last year, and also travelled to Dublin to accept the illustrious award.
UA Programme Director, Louise Hodgson, said ANU was one of the outstanding universities in the awards program this year.
"Matilda and Weng have done extraordinarily well to receive this medal, which places them as leaders in their research fields around the world," she said.
More than 5,000 submissions were received from undergraduates from 255 universities from 39 countries.