"Distinction" is meant as a compliment to the rare student who has submitted a portfolio with everything in top form--excellent grades, excellent research, excellent synthesis, and usually excellent service, teaching, and so on. Since 1995, 50 students have passed their portfolio "with distinction".
Qingyao Ai, Bo An, Aruna Balasubramanian, Nilanjan Banerjee, Michael Bendersky, Daniel Bernstein, Su Lin Blodgett, John Bowers, Aron Culotta, Mostafa Dehghan Shirehpaz, Peter Desnoyers, Niall Emmart, Zhengzhu Feng, Fabricio Ferreira, Sainyam Galhotra, Zihui Ge, Stephen Giguere, Bryan Horling, Gary Huang, Samuel Huston, Bo Jiang, Dov Katz, Akshat Kumar, Stephen Lee, Chao Li, Ming Li, Tsung-yu Lin, Donald Metzler, Aditya Mishra, Marek Petrik, Luis Pineda, Robert Powers, Doina Precup, Benjamin Ransford, Aaron Schein, Anand Seetharam, Borislava Simidchieva, Trevor Strohman, Luke Vilnis, Sofya Vorotnikova, Robert Walls, Xiaolan Wang, Xuerui Wang, Philipp Weis, Michael Wick, Timothy Wood, Kyle Wray, Hamed Zamani, Pengyu Zhang, Yahan Zhou
Bloomberg Fellowship (Katherine Keith, Helia Hashemi)
CAPES Fulbright Fellowship (Fabricio Ferreira, Bruno Ribeiro, Daniel Menasche)
Facebook Fellowship Program (John Vilk)
Fulbright Fellows (Nahuel Mangiarua, Carlos Mondragon Chapa, Klim Zaporojets)
GEM Fellowship (John Altidor, Paul Crouther, Francsico Garcia, Ranysha Ware, Nicholas Perello, Chase Randall)
Google Fellowship (Charlie Curstinger, Arvind Neelakantan, Rachee Singh, Xiaolan Wang, Milad Nasr Esfahani, Kalpesh Krishna)
Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship (Ayse Ozisik, Terri Yu)
IBM Ph.D. Fellowship (Clemens Rosenbaum, Upendra Sharma, Emma Strubell)
Department of Homeland Security Fellowship (Megan Olsen)
Microsoft Live Lab Fellowship (Benjamin Carterette)
Microsoft Research Fellowship (Aruna Balasubramanian, Aron Culotta, Pan Hu)
Microsoft Women's Scholarship (Yunmeng Ban)
NSF Fellowship (Su Lin Blodgett, John Bowers, Shane Clark, Jacqueline Feild, Joshua Glatt, Ariel Kobren, Peter Krafft, Tiffany Liu, Victoria Manfredi, Benjamin Mears, Benjamin Ransford, Karl Schultz, Rachel Shorey, Justin Svegliato, Rico Angell)
NSF Scholarship for Service (Cassian Corey, Adin Egid, Jianyi Huang)
NPSC Fellowship (Alicia Wolfe)
NASA Fellowship (Stephen Hart, Li Ku, Scott Kuindersma)
SAO Predoctoral Program (Kriste Krstovski)
Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges Award (Gregory Druck, Henry Feild, Sameer Singh, Michael Wick, Robert Walls)
Dissertation Writing Award (Roy Adams, John Bowers, Ethem Can, Meng-Chieh Chiu, Shiri Dori-Hacohen, Cibele Freire, Tian Guo, Liping Peng, Philip Thomas, Xiaojian Wu, Tsung-Yu Lin, Kevin Spiteri, Pinar Ozisik, Amee Trivedi, Chen Qu)
Eugene M. Isenberg Award (Mohamed Marwan Mattar)
Graduate School Fellowship (Bo An, Nilanjan Banerjee, Elizabeth Baseman, Michael Crouch, Akshat Kumar, Scott Niekum, Brandon Oubre, Marek Petrik, Ozgur Simsek, Sameer Singh, Edward Walters, Xuerui Wang)
Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education Fellowship (John Altidor, Rico Angell, Marc Cartright, Paul Crouther, Jarred Devaughn-Brown, Gary Holness, Blossom Metevier, Benjamin Teixeira, Roberto Olivares, Patrick Pegus)
Spaulding Smith Fellowship (Aaron Elliot, Edmond Cunningham, Daniel Marew, Miguel Fuentes, Katherine Avery, Samuel Osebe, Monica Moniot,
UMass Innovation Challenge, First Place (Shiri Dori-Hacohen)
David W. Stemple Scholarship in Computing (Robert Powers, Rian Shambaugh)
Edward Riseman & Allen Hanson Scholarship (Mikayla Timm, Yang Zhou)
James F. Kurose Scholarship (Hia Ghosh, Brandon Oubre)
Jim Gray Scholarship (Yunmeng Ban, Anna Fariha, Mehrnaz Najafi, Lirong Yuan, Dan Zhang)
Popplestone Fellowship (James Atwood, David Balaban, William Billings, Jacqueline Feild, Gary B. Huang, Hee-Tae Jung, Li Ku, Spencer Lane, Tsung-Yu Lin, Tiffany Liu, Sandhya Saisubramanian)
Sudha and Rajesh Jha Scholarship (Samuel Baxter, Amee Trivedi)
Utgoff Memorial Fellowship (Su Lin Blodgett, Kristina Fedorenko, Benjamin Mears, Katherine Keith, Ariel Kobren, Juston Moore, John Wamburu, Xiaojian Wu)
Victor Lesser Graduate Scholarship (Connor Basich, Kaleigh Clary, Daniel Garant, Justin Svegliato)
Outstanding Dissertation Awards (Abhigyan '15, John Altidor '14, Aruna Balasubramanian '11, Nilanjan Banerjee '09, Daniel Barowy '17, Boulat Bash '15, David Belanger '17, Michael Bendersky '12, Charles Curtsinger '16, Peter Desnoyers '08, Michael Hay '10, Gary B. Huang '12, Akshat Kumar '13, Chao Li '14, Marc Maier '14, Siddharth Srivastava '10, Charles Sutton '08, Timothy Wood '11, Ting Yang '09, Pengyu Zhang '16)
Outstanding Synthesis Project Awards (Devesh Agrawal '09, John Altidor '10, Michael Bendersky '10, Thomas Boucher '14, Kaleigh Clary '17, Niall Emmart '13, Fabricio Ferreira '13, Stephen Giguere '16, Nicholas Hobbs '15, Li Yang Ku '15, Daniel Menasche '09, Aditya Mishra '12, Andres Molina-Markham '11, Milad Nasr Esfahani '17, Marek Petrik '08, Mastooreh Salajegheh '10, Anand Seetharam '12, Emma Tosch '14, Sofya Vorontikova '16, Robert Walls '11, Hamed Zamani '17)
Outstanding Teaching Assistant Awards (Garret Bernstein '16, William Billings '12, Bruno Castro da Silva '10, Chaniel Chadowitz '14, Ryan Connell '14, Kristina Fedorenko '15, Zongfang Lin '08, Phillip Kirlin '09, Benjamin Kushigian '17, Brandon McPhail '11, Jessica Newman '12, James Partan '09, Adarsh Rangaiah '16, Dirk Ruiken '10, Borislava Simidchieva '10, Theodore Sudol '15, Aditya Sundarrajan '13, Keen Sung '17, Philip Thomas '11, Philipp Weis '08, Kyle Wray '13)