The Distinguished Fellows Video Contest is a highlight of an annual celebration honoring graduate students who receive prestigious fellowships and their supporters. This year, nearly 200 fellows, donors, faculty, and staff viewed the winning entries at a gala gathering on March 22.

Winners received research travel grants in the amounts of $1,500, $1,000, and $750 respectively. Because several videos were fiercely competitive as close runners-up, there were two third place winners this year. All of this year’s videos are well worth viewing!


First Place: Kaveh Danesh

Recipient of the Berkeley Fellowship and the Audrey and Charles Kelly Aikin Scholarship
PhD student, Department of Economics

Kaveh Danesh is a PhD student in the Department of Economics. Before coming to Berkeley, he attended Duke and Harvard Universities; received Fulbright and National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellowships; served on Duke’s Board of Trustees; and interned as a writer at The White House. He is studying poverty and inequality.


Second Place: Marcos Martínez Chacon

Recipient of the Dent Hayes Robert Scholarship
Master’s student, School of Journalism

Marcos is a UC Berkeley journalism graduate student with experience covering government wrongdoing and human rights violations in Mexico. As a reporter, he is committed to pursuing investigative stories that shed light to corrupt government practices and that expose abuses committed against minorities and underrepresented communities. During his Master’s studies at Berkeley, Marcos has contributed to Univision’s investigative unit, among other media outlets. He currently works as a merit fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley.


Third Place: Laura Dev

Recipient of the Berkeley Fellowship
PhD student, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Laura Dev is a PhD candidate in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Her studies focus on the intersection of political ecology, science studies, and ethnobotany. Originally from New Hampshire, she received her undergraduate degree from Tufts University and an MS in Ecology from Colorado State University.


Third Place: Adam Jadhav

Recipient of the Berkeley Fellowship
PhD student, Department of Geography

Adam Jadhav is PhD student in the Department of Geography, where he uses the lenses of political ecology to examine the intersection of development, capital, fisheries and political subjectivity in India. He also has an interest in relationships among environmental change, agricultural development and right-wing populism in the rural Midwestern U.S. He has a Master’s degree in global environmental policy and previously worked as a researcher and journalist in the U.S. and India.


View past contest submissions