This spring Shark Mutulili ’25, a public policy analysis major with a politics focus, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. The prestigious international fellowship is awarded to about 100 students each year, 32 from the United States and the rest from countries across the world.

Mutulili was one of two students awarded the Rhodes Scholarship for Kenya. A Nairobi native, she is Pomona’s 13th Rhodes Scholar, second-ever female recipient and first since Peter Chiarelli ’03.

The oldest fellowship award in the world, the Rhodes covers all expenses to study at the University of Oxford for two or more years. Mutulili plans to pursue a Master of Public Policy at Oxford before returning back home to Kenya long-term.

Her ultimate hope is to “shape better systems to see the dignity in every human being,” she says.

When Mutulili learned she was one of 10 finalists for the Kenya award, she had to quickly make travel arrangements to fly to Kenya in less than a week for the final interview—a flight made possible by Pomona’s Office of the President. The day after the interview, while preparing to head to the airport, she received a congratulatory phone call. “I was jumping up and down,” she says. “I was in complete shock.”

Mutulili served as Pomona’s 2025 senior class president, leading committees to improve student life and foster community on campus.

“I wanted to serve and to understand the way people think, the things that bring them joy and the challenges they’ve gone through,” she says. “I’ve tried my best for this to be a senior year worth remembering.”

Her senior thesis focuses on comprehensive sex education to prevent gender-based violence against adolescent girls and women in Kenya. She looks at tribal knowledge, traditions and practices as well as colonial histories of education to understand how gender biases and power imbalances affect the policies that are created.

“Shark stands out at Pomona for her joyous spirit and her thoughtful and caring engagement across differences, whether of opinion, identity or discipline,” says President G. Gabrielle Starr. “We at Pomona are so proud of her and thrilled for her to take advantage of these new opportunities at Oxford.”

As a recently announced Napier Initiative Fellow, Mutulili will continue her work to improve living conditions for children and mothers in two rural prisons in Kenya, providing for immediate needs such as baby food, diapers and cots as well as working toward long-term goals such as improving sanitation, providing water tanks and creating child care spaces.

One of the first people Mutulili told about the Rhodes Scholarship was her academic advisor David Menefee-Libey, whom she says has been a staunch supporter at Pomona.

“Every time I talk with Shark, I learn about yet another amazing thing she’s been in the middle of,” says Menefee-Libey, the William A. Johnson Professor of Government. “And through all that she remains a kind and joyful person. I can’t wait to see what she does next.”

Seven faculty members—including five first-time honorees—were bestowed at Commencement with Wig Distinguished Professor Awards, recognizing their excellence in teaching, commitment to students, and service to the College and the community.

Presented annually since 1955, the awards involve anonymous votes from Pomona juniors and seniors that are then confirmed by a committee of trustees, faculty and students.

Malachai Bandy is an assistant professor of music who plays some 20 different instruments spanning more than 800 years of music history. His expertise includes viola da gamba technique, history and iconography; historical performance practice; and 17th-century North-German music.

Mietek P. Boduszyński is an associate professor of politics and expert on U.S. foreign policy, democratization, post-conflict stabilization, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and the Middle East and North Africa.

J Finley is an associate professor of Africana studies whose research looks at Black women’s history, performance and cultural expression, and the performative and political efficacy of Black women’s humor and comedy.

Frances M. Hanzawa, an associate professor of biology who’s been at Pomona for 30+ years, conducts diverse research in ecology, evolution, plant ecology, genetic and demographic consequences of seed dispersal and plant-animal interactions.

Tom Le is an associate professor of politics with expertise in Japanese security policy, the U.S.–Japan alliance, military and security balance in East Asia and East Asia regionalism.

M. Bilal Nasir is an assistant professor of Asian American studies whose research interests include policing and surveillance, critical race studies, secularism, social movements, science and technology, and anthropology of Muslims and Islam.

Shahriar Shahriari is the William Polk Russell Professor of Mathematics and Statistics and now a six-time Wig Award recipient, with expertise in combinatorics of posets, extremal set theory, finite group theory, representation theory of finite groups and surreal numbers.

From left, Pomona Professors Shahriar Shahriari, Malachai Bandy, Frances M. Hanzawa and J Finley

Erica Nelson ’08

Erica Nelson ’08 is aiming beyond the stars, to the origin story of the universe. Thanks to the 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, Nelson is taking pictures of the very first galaxies to learn what the universe was like at the beginning of time.

That quest has landed the University of Colorado-Boulder assistant professor of astrophysics on CBS’s 60 Minutes and NPR’s Science Friday—and on an episode of the Pomona College podcast Sagecast, where she and her undergraduate mentor, Philip Choi, associate professor of physics and astronomy, explained the paradigm-shifting potential of what she and her colleagues have discovered.

How Pomona developed her interest:

I remember my first astrophysics classes and being absolutely blown away by the scale of the universe and the incredibly complex physical processes that rule the universe on large scales. We can use powerful telescopes to effectively look back in time. As a kid I found that concept so mind-blowing that I couldn’t imagine spending my days thinking about anything else.

One of my favorite Pomona memories solidified that I wanted to teach and help the next generation. We had a computer programming assignment for Philip Choi’s class, and it was awful because I was so bad at coding. But Phil took the time to work through it with me until midnight. It was such an act of kindness and really launched me on my journey.

Her research focus:

I’m looking for new methods to understand how galaxies and black holes form and evolve. Powerful telescopes like the Webb allow us to see really, really great distances. That means we can see light that’s been traveling for almost the entire age of the universe, from close to the beginning of time itself. We’re able to see how the universe and the galaxies in it evolved, and that allows us to piece together their origin story.

Galaxy cluster Abell S1063. Courtesy European Space Agency

Finding a surprise in Webb images:

When the first images were released, the most surprising thing we saw was these objects that were very, very red. They had been completely invisible to the Hubble Telescope. We had to use all of the physics and astrophysics we knew to try to infer what those objects were. They are incredibly far away, close to the beginning of the universe. Yet the masses we inferred for them were even more massive than our Milky Way galaxy is now. According to our theories, the universe shouldn’t have had enough time to form things that were that massive that early. It was surprising and stunning and, if true, upends our views of how the first cosmic structures formed in the early universe.

The reaction of the astronomy community:

There have been hundreds of papers on these [red] objects, and we are still figuring out what they are. One of the things that is surprising is that some of the most luminous objects in the universe are actually “supermassive black holes” [upward of 10 billion times the size of the sun]. There are some theories that can explain some components of the light we’re seeing from these objects as growing, supermassive black holes of a type we’ve never seen before.

The reason black holes can be so luminous is that when mass falls into a black hole, an immense amount of gravitational energy is released. Some fraction of that energy can be converted into light we see in the form of accretion disks around the objects and in these black holes blowing out enormous jets. They show up in different ways, but the reason they are so luminous is because there is so much energy available from matter falling into them. The astrophysics community is completely undecided on what these objects are. They are a complete mystery that we’re still working very hard to solve it.

(Wide) open problems that remain:

A long-standing problem in extragalactic astrophysics is that at the center of every massive galaxy is a supermassive black hole, and we do not know how it got there.

One of the possibilities … is a direct collapse black hole. Most black holes are the end product of the evolution of stars, which are powered by nuclear fusion. Once the [stars] have used up all of their fuel, they no longer have anything to support them against the immense force of gravity, and they collapse. If they are massive enough, there is nothing that can prevent them from collapsing into black holes.

But that only gets you to black holes that are on the scale of the mass of a star. The thing we need at the center of these galaxies is black holes that are millions to billions of times the mass of a star. It’s the subject of a lot of debate how you actually get a black hole that massive.

One of the possibilities for some of this light we’re seeing in the very early universe—which we’ve recently found evidence for—is the formation of a supermassive black hole directly from a cloud of gas without forming any stars. They look like stars, but instead of being powered by nuclear fusion, they are powered by growing supermassive black holes inside of them.

These are very strange objects. Understanding them is still very much a work in progress. It’s challenging, but not impossible, to truly understand the formation of the first lights that lit up the cosmic night.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full interview in Season 7 of the Sagecast Podcast.

This spring Pomona-Pitzer Athletic Hall of Fame inducted six new Sagehens!

Anders Crabo ’12 – Men’s Track & Field

Crabo was a two-time All-American with a top-5 finish at the NCAA Championships, winning the SCIAC championship all four years of his collegiate career and setting the conference record in the steeplechase.

Annie Lydens ’13 – Women’s Cross Country and Track & Field

Lydens was an All-American in cross country and track and field, and remains one of the most decorated runners in Sagehens’ history. She was a two-time SCIAC Cross Country Runner of the Year and is No. 10 all-time in the SCIAC in the 5K.

Martha Marich ’12 – Lacrosse

Marich was a foundational member of the Sagehens women’s lacrosse team and finished her career a three-time All-Region selection, a three-time All-SCIAC honoree, and a SCIAC Player of the Year. She is the program leader in career goals (332) and the first lacrosse player—male or female—to be inducted.

Luke Sweeney ’13 – Football

Sweeney’s 2011 season cemented his place in program history as he became the first Sagehen to lead the nation in rushing yards. His 1,419 rushing yards that year remains the program’s single-season mark. He graduated as a three-time All-SCIAC honoree.

Alyssa Corley ’11 – Softball

Corley made two All-SCIAC first teams and has set many Sagehens records, including being the program leader in home runs (35) and runs batted in (115). After graduation, she earned her medical degree at Dartmouth Medical School.

Kirk Jones – Distinguished Service
for Athletic Training

Jones has mentored multiple generations of trainers after 45 years working at Pomona-Pitzer. Among the competitions for which he has served as a certified trainer: the International Swimming and Diving Championships and the Olympic Track and Field Trials.

When you talk stoves, people listen,” says the Stanford Ph.D. student

While not the most exciting topic for a Ph.D. research project, years of studying the ubiquitous household appliance as a graduate student at Stanford University revealed to Yannai Kashtan ’20 that gas stoves may be contributing to premature deaths and cases of childhood asthma.

A study co-authored with peers at Stanford and Oakland-based research institute PSE Healthy Energy was published in May, and Kashtan was featured in a subsequent Los Angeles Times story about the conclusions.

“I didn’t think the outside world would think [stoves] are that interesting,” the 25-year-old Oakland native says. “It’s not sexy. It’s not shooting rockets off into space. But [the interest] makes sense. This is something that affects one out of three people in the U.S. It makes sense people want to know about the dangers [stoves] pose.”

Kashtan inside his lab at Stanford

Over the course of their research, Kashtan and his peers at Stanford found that gas stovetops release a high level of pollutants—carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and benzene—that can inflame the lungs when inhaled.

Since at least the early 20th century, Kashtan says, the gas industry knew of the dangers of gas stove pollution, and yet over the years, stoves became the only unvented gas appliance in homes. As conscious as folks are about what is being cooked over the flame, Kashtan adds, they should be doubly conscious about the pollution from the flame itself.

The L.A. Times was the latest media outlet to feature the Pomona alumnus, whose research and comments have been published by national and international organizations such as CNN, Newsweek and The Guardian.

In a March profile in The New York Times, Kashtan advocated against fossil fuel companies funding climate research and solutions. The article called Kashtan a young climate researcher, a title he isn’t quite sure fits.

“I see myself both as an air quality scientist and a communicator,” the researcher says. “Someone who can try to bring science into policy and into, maybe, public perception as well. I like the idea of creating knowledge and putting it into action as much as possible.”

While at Pomona, Kashtan, a chemistry and physics double major, was remarkable in class and “simply outstanding in the research lab,” Janice Hudgings, Seeley W. Mudd Professor of Physics, wrote in a letter about her student.

Kashtan’s expertise in a lab comes as no surprise.

As a boy, Kashtan ran a YouTube channel under the handle “elementguy27.” From a homemade lab inside his parents’ garage, Kashtan explained dozens of elements from the periodic table—beryllium, cobalt, barium, selenium, among the 92 videos on the channel.

“As long as I can remember, I loved learning,” Kashtan says.

Beyond working at an advanced level in Hudgings’ lab at Pomona, Kashtan was “a terrific team player, always ready to jump in and help one of his peers,” Hudgings wrote.

Kashtan routinely volunteered as a teaching assistant and helped younger students with their homework “simply because it’s important to him that his peers succeed, too,” Hudgings added.

As a senior, Kashtan became the first Pomona student to be awarded the Knight-Hennessy scholarship—a full ride to Stanford to pursue the graduate program of his choosing. Knight-Hennessy scholars are thought to be “rebellious minds and independent spirits” and “future global leaders,” according to the criteria.

After being homeschooled through high school and being welcomed at Pomona, Kashtan speaks highly of the College’s faculty.

“At Pomona,” he says, “I was taught by lots of professors who were dedicated to their pedagogy, focused on teaching first, and had decades of experience, and that was a huge privilege. That focus on education and teaching, it’s not to be taken for granted.”

His Ph.D. research project complete, Kashtan plans to take a break from exploring gas stoves for the time being, though he intends to stay in a similar line of work in the future.

“I’m motivated by science itself,” he says, “but also wanting to make sure that science is then turned into action.”

Okolo speaking on a Brookings Institution panel with the Michelle Donelan, the U.K.’s former secretary of state for science, innovation and technology (far left). Above, Okolo’s collection of awards and plaques in her Washington, D.C., office.

Centered on a shelf in her Washington, D.C., office is the plaque Chinasa T. Okolo ’18 received nearly a decade ago from the Office of Black Student Affairs of The Claremont Colleges.

“Recognizing Genius in Our Community,” her 2015 First-Year Student Award reads.

Okolo, a former computer science major by way of Kansas City, Missouri, holds dear her time at Pomona, crediting her liberal arts education and professors for igniting in her a desire to understand human-computer interaction.

Now an expert in artificial intelligence (AI) after years of postgraduate and professional research, Okolo recently landed on Time Magazine’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in AI.

“With the education I received at Pomona,” Okolo says, “I’ve been able to leverage my skills and understanding of how technology, particularly AI, can impact and is impacting marginalized populations in the U.S. and globally. A lot of times this kind of work doesn’t get too much attention, so I’m very grateful to have been included on the list.”

As a fellow for the Brookings Institution, Okolo advocates for responsible AI adoption and governance across the Global South. At Brookings, her research includes analyzing datafication and algorithmic marginalization in Africa.

In recent months, Okolo has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and she has appeared in segments on Voice of America, the country’s largest international broadcaster.

This summer, TechCrunch published a Q&A with Okolo as part of its “Women in AI” series on “remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution.”

“This AI boom has given me an opportunity to show the necessity of AI literacy,” Okolo says. “People are very enamored with the possibilities of AI, but don’t understand implications around bias and inequality.”

In addition to appearing in print and broadcast media, Okolo has been a guest speaker this year at international conferences and workshops in Senegal, South Africa, Brazil, Turkey, Belgium and the United Arab Emirates.

Well before she started trotting the globe, Okolo studied abroad in Hungary while at Pomona. Having never been out of the country before her semester away, Okolo says her maiden international trip “gave me the comfortability as a global citizen … and was a launching point to me visiting different countries throughout my career.”

Alexandra Papoutsaki, associate professor of computer science, met Okolo as a first-year professor in 2017 and found her inquisitive, methodical and thoughtful in how she approached researching human-computer interaction—and, particularly, the inclusivity issues certain technologies create for people of color.

Less than a decade later, Papoutsaki is astounded by—and proud of—Okolo’s rise.

“She’s been published very prolifically by some of the most competitive venues in our area,” Papoutsaki says. “She’s great at going out there and disseminating information publicly. She’s absolutely an emerging leader in tech in general, not just AI. She’s a person who’s able to build relationships with industry, NGOs and academia.”

In her first year as a Ph.D. student at Cornell, Okolo sent Papoutsaki a postcard from New York.

Papoutsaki still has it in her office.

“It’s remarkable that someone that young is able to do what she’s doing,” Papoutsaki says. “Chinasa is the absolute embodiment of how remarkable our students can be, how they can excel while at Pomona, but also take what we give them and do so much more once they graduate.”