The UW Department of Sociology is pleased to announce that Yuanxi Li (BA Honors Sociology and BS Informatics 2026, incoming graduate student) is one of only four students to receive the Dean's Medal for the 2025-26 academic school year. The award is representative of her personal commitment and significant academic achievements.
"Receiving the Dean's Medal is an incredible honor and a deeply meaningful recognition of my academic journey at the University of Washington," says Li. "I am especially grateful that this award recognizes the different forms of curiosity and expression that have shaped me, from my coursework and research to my self-published poetry collection. It reminds me of the mentors, professors, classmates, and communities who have supported me along the way, and it motivates me to continue pursuing work that connects sociological inquiry with real-world social issues."
In addition to her undergraduate majors in Sociology and Informatics, Yuanxi was an IPI Cybersecurity Policy Fellow in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, a Mary Gates Research Scholar and a UW Sociology Honors student. As an interdisciplinary researcher, her work focuses on how computational methods and demographic analysis can illuminate and mitigate structural inequalities.
"I chose to continue my graduate studies in sociology because it has become the field where many of my questions feel at home. I am interested in health disparities, social networks, and demographic change because they help me understand how people's lives are connected to larger patterns of inequality and change. Continuing in sociology feels like a natural next step for me--a way to keep learning, asking better questions, and doing research that matters to the communities and issues I care about."
Congratulations, Yuanxi, we look forward to welcoming you as an incoming UW Sociology graduate student in the Fall!