Yara El-Tawil receives 2025 CSE HACKS Spirit Award

Yara El-Tawil, a PhD student in Computer Science and Engineering, has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the CSE HACKS Spirit Award. Established in 2023, the award recognizes a CSE Graduate Student who embodies the spirit of CSE’s values of honesty, achievement, cooperation, knowledge, and service (HACKS). 

Prof. Chris Peikert, CSE Associate Chair for Graduate Affairs, presented the award to Yara at the CSE Graduate Student Recognition Reception on April 28. In introducing Yara, he said, “Many of us have been in a position to observe Yara’s dedication to CSE and its values. Her nominators provided too many examples to list even a fraction of.” 

Peikert went on to note how Yara has made a positive impact on the CSE community, the greater U-M community, and the local community of Ann Arbor.

Yara has collaborated within and outside of CSE to plan and execute impactful events. She partnered with Mechanical Engineering to organize the Disability Visibility Symposium, and with the School of Information to organize the Tech Together event. Working with CSE faculty, students, and staff, she helped to organize Heritage Month events and roundtable discussions on important issues throughout the academic year. Her collaborators in these endeavors speak to her ability to cooperate effectively. 

Yara has also made numerous contributions to activities sponsored by the Artificial Intelligence Lab. As coordinator for the Friday Night AI community lecture series, she collaborated with our panelists and put in a great deal of work into developing and fine-tuning the interactive activities that were presented to the local community. She has worked as an AI application reader, assisted with the Michigan AI Symposium, and helped CSE’s Building Bridges initiative.

Yara volunteered to support the Explore Grad Studies workshop for prospective graduate students, providing application feedback, sharing experiences with visiting students, and organizing a tour of Ann Arbor for these students. Her service also extends also into the broader community through volunteering as a Girl Scout Troop Leader. 

Yara is advised by Prof. Emily Mower Provost and currently works in Mower Provost’s CHAI lab to identify mental health outcomes using vocal biomarkers. She is interested in using real-world speech data to predict mood symptom severity and participant-informed design of passive health monitoring systems.