Sachs Program Student Grants are awarded annually to eligible undergraduate and graduate students and student groups at the University of Pennsylvania. Cover design by Elaine Lopez.
The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania is thrilled to announce the recipients of our 2026 Student Grant Awards.
This year’s pool of applicants was once again our largest and most competitive to date. Of the many compelling and creative applications we received, we are proud to share the seventeen University of Pennsylvania student projects selected as 2026 Sachs Program grantees, representing the breadth and depth of the arts at Penn.
Supported projects demonstrate a wide range of creative practices, including film, visual arts, poetry, performance, and storytelling. Additionally, eight of the seventeen projects self-identified as addressing, in some manner, the complexities of the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, and the nation’s ongoing struggle to realize its founding principles. Ten of the seventeen projects are by graduate students; seven are by undergraduate students.
A sampling of this year’s supported projects includes:
- A collaborative experimental film that moves between public mourning drums and private healing rituals in southern Iran.
- A community-centered reading series that brings together poets working and translating across a diversity of languages.
- A narrative nonfiction project that portrays the resilience of patients, providers, and outreach workers responding to the overdose crisis across Philadelphia.
- A body of artworks exploring histories of Black cultural production, the limitations of the archive, and strategies for making sonic and sensory legacies visible.
The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation congratulates all 2026 Student Grant Award recipients!
Sachs Program 2026 Student Grant Awards
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Aliyah Dominique Jefferies
Weitzman School of Design, Graduate Fine Arts, MFA candidate
Saman Enn Og Aftur (Together Once Again) — A short film intertwining the lives of a Black man and woman, anchored in the past and present, attempting to survive impossible conditions.
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Allison Li
College of Arts & Sciences, Neuroscience, C’26
Stories of the Avenue — A narrative nonfiction project that portrays the resilience of patients, providers, and outreach workers responding to the overdose crisis across Philadelphia.
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Armaghan Fakhraeirad
School of Arts & Sciences, Ethnomusicology, PhD candidate
Listen! Something Still Hanging from the Tree — A collaborative experimental film that moves between public mourning drums and private healing rituals in southern Iran.
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BioArt Lab at Penn (Jenny Li)
College of Arts & Sciences, Computational Biology; minors in design, computer science, and chemistry, C’26; submatriculated for a master’s in biology
BioArt Lab: Art of Science Symposium — A symposium featuring student work from art-science workshops at Philadelphia schools, pioneering speakers, and pieces from a community call for submissions to highlight art as a tool for scientific visualization and public engagement.
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Cacie Rosario Jackson
Weitzman School of Design, Graduate Fine Arts, MFA candidate
Envelope — A body of artworks exploring histories of Black cultural production, the limitations of the archive, and strategies for making sonic and sensory legacies visible.
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Dagny Elise Carlsson
Weitzman School of Design, Graduate Architecture and Landscape Architecture, MLA and MArch candidate
In Their Own Dreams: Architectural Process through the National Museum of the American Indian — An interview project highlighting the profound role Indigenous communities played in reshaping both architectural practice and museology through their involvement in the National Museum of the American Indian.
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Enne Kim and Trisha Bheemanathini
College of Arts & Sciences, International Relations and English, C’26; College of Arts & Sciences, Sociology, C’26
GRAIN Film Festival: Gathering Rising Asian-American Imagination Narratives — An AAPI film festival centering underrepresented student filmmakers through screenings, shared meals, and public dialogue, fostering community and creative resistance.
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Gevorg Ghazaryan
College of Arts & Sciences, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, C’27
The Real Cost of Development: Communities and the Environment at Risk — A mini-documentary film examining how data centers in Loudoun County, Virginia, impact nearby communities and the environment.
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Jai Ausir Vinson-Scott
College of Arts & Sciences, Law and Society, Cinema and Media Studies, C’29
The Boy Who Couldn’t Hold What He Broke — A multimodal project exploring Jai Ausir Vinson-Scott’s formative years as an African American, queer man.
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Juliana Li
College of Arts & Sciences, Comparative Literature and Economics, C’28
Criss Cross — A student-run print art publication offering a site for cross-disciplinary collaboration and exchange.
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Latoya Brisco
School of Arts & Sciences, Anthropology, PhD candidate
Stilted Ground — Working with a queer women-led stilt-walking group in Kingston, Jamaica, this experimental audio-visual work explores urban design, political belonging, and social reproduction of space through embodied performance.
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Maya Yu Zhang
Weitzman School of Design, Graduate Fine Arts, MFA candidate
(un)known address — A performance where diasporic longing shifts into a tale of becoming, excavating the fraught terrain between mothers and daughters, home and exile.
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Noa Mori Machover
Weitzman School of Design, Graduate Fine Arts and Landscape Architecture, MFA and MLA candidate
After Market — An interdisciplinary artistic research project tracing platinum-group metals through informal and formal economies.
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Sol Kim
Weitzman School of Design, Graduate Fine Arts, MFA candidate
Human Condition — A photographic work that investigates and subverts the algorithms through which computer vision detects and categorizes humans.
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Timmy Straw
School of Arts & Sciences, Comparative Literature, PhD candidate
Poets Who Translate — A community-centered reading series that brings together poets working and translating across a diversity of languages.
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Vivian Bi
School of Arts & Sciences, Anthropology, PhD candidate
A Ceremony Without Walls: The Reparative Politics of Arts Innovation after Capitalist Transformation — A collaborative exhibition and panel on the Second Annual Art Junpo, a Hainan-based arts festival experimenting with new forms of spiritual & social life in a Chinese special economic zone.
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WriteMinds
Michelle Lu: College of Arts & Sciences, English, C’27
Grace Haeun Lee: College of Arts & Sciences, Health and Societies, C’28
Emily Ng: College of Arts & Sciences, Neuroscience, C’25
Jillian Troth: College of Arts & Sciences, Neuroscience, C’25WriteMinds — A creative writing initiative that brings accessible, imaginative workshops to all older adults, particularly individuals experiencing memory loss or cognitive decline.
Sachs Program 2026 Grant Awards
Additional information about each 2026 Student Grant Award will be published on the Sachs Program website with the upcoming announcement of all Sachs Program 2026 Grant Awards.
Please join us on Monday, April 27, for a celebration and public announcement of all Sachs Program 2026 Grant Award recipients at a festive event in the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. Details will be announced soon.
All are welcome, and we hope to see you there!