The Princeton Neuroscience Institute celebrated the Class of 2025 Neuroscience (NEU) majors during its annual Class Day Ceremony on May 26, 2025. The event brought together seniors, their families and friends, and PNI faculty to honor the accomplishments and academic journeys of this year's cohort of graduating neuroscience students.

"Class Day is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate all of the hard work seniors have done in their courses and independent studies during their time at Princeton,” said Elizabeth Gould, Ph.D., the NEU director of undergraduate studies and the Dorman T. Warren Professor of Neuroscience. “The neuroscience class of 2025 deserves a big congratulations for their successes and also a thank you from the PNI faculty for the energy and insight they brought to our classrooms and laboratories."

As part of the celebration, students received their certificates in Neuroscience from Mala Murthy, Ph.D., director of the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and the Karol and Marnie Marcin ’96 Professor of Neuroscience.

Senior thesis awards

Two students were further recognized with the John Brinster Class of 1943 Senior Thesis Prize in Neuroscience, which is awarded each year to the most outstanding senior theses in the field of neuroscience. This year’s recipients were Nathaniel Tung and Veronica Zhang, who each gave a short presentation about their senior thesis work as part of the Class Day celebration.

Nathaniel Tung

Nathaniel Tung was awarded for his senior thesis, "An investigation into the neurobehavioral interactions between sensory- and reward-prediction errors during motor skill learning," which was advised by PNI associated professor Jordan Taylor, Ph.D.  In his nomination for the award, Professor Taylor wrote:

“Nate undertook a really ambitious project, seeking to determine if there was direct modulation of sensory-prediction errors in cerebellum during sensorimotor adaptation. To do this, he conducted an fMRI study using a very clever design to dissociate between sensory-prediction and reward-prediction errors. His findings are the first to observe reward modulation of the cerebellum in sensorimotor adaptation, which to date has only been speculated in human behavioral experiments and rodent studies.”

Veronica Zhang 

Veronica Zhang was honored for her thesis, "A single dose of psilocybin potentially restores touch sensitivity after early-life whisker loss in mice," which was co-advised by PNI professor Sam Wang, Ph.D., and C.V. Starr postdoctoral fellow Esra Sefik, Ph.D. In his nomination for the award, Professor Wang wrote:

“Veronica did exceptional work. She tested if a single dose of psilocybin, which has previously been demonstrated to cause dendritic spine proliferation, can reopen a developmental critical period in barrel cortex. By testing close to 100 mice, she found that whisker cutting at P15 or later, which normally leads to long-lasting deficits in texture discrimination, can be remediated by a dose of psilocybin in adulthood. Her behavioral testing and statistical analysis were excellent, and the work is close to publishable.”

Departmental honors

In addition to the senior thesis prizes, departmental honors are awarded at Class Day by academic departments with concentration programs. Neuroscience honors are determined based on the grades received by the student in departmental studies (including junior independent work, the senior thesis, and the senior departmental examination). Congratulations to the following NEU students who earned the following achievements: 

Honors

Anna Borondianski 

Ella Rosenberg

Marie Sirenko

High Honors

Dyanne Ahn 

Erin Chen

Mackenzie Wilson

Highest Honors

Jaime Chen

Shirley Xue 

Veronica Zhang