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The University of Toronto’s Ina Anreiter and Hannah Kia have won the prestigious CAGS-ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards for 2020 – marking the first time in the award’s 27-year history that students from the same institution have won both awards.

Administered by the and sponsored by ProQuest, the awards recognize Canadian doctoral dissertations that make unusually significant and original contributions to their academic communities and to Canadian society at large. They are given annually in two categories: engineering, medical sciences and natural sciences, and fine arts, humanities and social sciences. 

Anreiter and Kia earned their PhDs in 2019. Anreiter, whose supervisor wasMarla Sokolowski of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology, has accepted a position as assistant professor in the department of biological sciences at U of T Scarborough. Kia, whose supervisor was Professor Lori E. Ross of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, is an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia.

“To be recognized in both categories – an unprecedented honour – is a testament to the innovation and original thinking we have been able to foster at U of T,” says Charmaine Williams, acting dean of the School of Graduate Studies. “I’m incredibly proud of our students for their commitment and intellectual rigour, and incredibly grateful to the faculty, staff, and community members who make U of T such an enriching place.”