Past Medal Recipients
Read about the about the past recipients of the President's Medal for Science and Innovation.
2024–2024: Kaja LeWinn ’98
Kaja LeWinn is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, was presented with the Presidential Medal for Science and Innovation on October 30, 2024. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Trinity College with a major in behavioral neuroscience and went on to earn a doctoral degree from the Harvard School of Public Health in Social Epidemiology. She was then selected for the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars program. In her work, she integrates perspectives from epidemiology, psychology and neuroscience to identify the modifiable physical and social exposures that matter most for child neurodevelopment and mental health. Driven by a strong conviction that all children should have the opportunity to realize their full potential, much of her work focuses on underrepresented and understudied populations. She is a leader of several regional and national epidemiological studies, including the National Institutes of Health funded ECHO Consortium, which follows over 30,000 U.S. children and their families. She has authored over 130 peer reviewed publications, and her work has been featured in the Atlantic, NPR, Fortune, and other news outlets.
2023–2024: Eric R. Fossum ’79, H’14
Eric R. Fossum ’79, H’14 received Trinity’s first Presidential Medal for Science and Innovation on February 28, 2024,
Fossum majored in physics and engineering at Trinity. He went on to earn an M.S. and a Ph.D. in engineering and applied science from Yale University.
Fossum is the John H. Krehbiel Sr. Professor for Emerging Technologies at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, director of Thayer’s Ph.D. Innovation Program, and vice provost for entrepreneurship and technology transfer at Dartmouth.
In 2017, Fossum won the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, considered by many as engineering’s Nobel Prize. He invented the CMOS active pixel image sensor used in almost all cell-phone cameras, webcams, many digital-still cameras and in medical imaging, among other applications. He worked at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was CEO of two successful high tech companies and is a serial entrepreneur. He has published more than 300 technical papers and holds 180 U.S. patents.
A Trinity trustee from 2014 to 2022, Fossum has served on the College’s Board of Fellows, STEM Advisory Board, and Engineering Advisory Council. He was honored with Trinity’s Alumni Achievement Award in 2004, an honorary doctor of science degree in 2014, and the Alumni Medal for Excellence in 2017. He currently serves on the Entrepreneurship Center Advisory Board.
