The College of Sciences hosted its annual awards dinner on Sept. 24 at The Terrace at Lonnie Poole Golf Course, where three alumni and four students were recognized for their outstanding achievements and contributions.

Meet this year’s award recipients.

Distinguished Alumnus Award

Leigh Wilkinson ’82 received this year’s Distinguished Alumnus Award, which recognizes alumni whose exceptional achievements and service have brought distinction to the college. Distinguished Alumnus recipients from across NC State were also recognized at a universitywide event earlier this month.

Wilkinson has a B.S. in mathematics from NC State and a law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She spent her 40-year legal career with the Ward and Smith law firm in New Bern, North Carolina, rising to become a Healthcare Practice Partner. She also holds leadership roles in several local organizations, including the New Bern Area Chamber of Commerce and Civitan International. Wilkinson has been honored with the North Carolina Bar Association Citizen Lawyer Award and the Carlie B. Sessoms Memorial Award – Civitan of the Decade. She has also been named multiple times to the Best Lawyers in America list. 

At NC State, Wilkinson served for more than a decade on the College of Sciences Foundation Board, including a period as chair. She was also the charter president of the college’s Alumni Advisory Board. She and her husband established the Leigh and Greg Wilkinson Scholarship Endowment, which has supported two students so far. In 2017, the college honored Wilkinson with the Zenith Medal for Service in recognition of her efforts to advance our mission. 

Zenith Medal for Service

This year’s recipient of the Zenith Medal for Service is Barb Prillaman ’86, who earned a B.S. in statistics from NC State. The award recognizes distinguished contributions or advocacy that advance the college’s ability to make powerful impacts on science. 

Prillaman is a statistical consultant at Willes Consulting Group and teaches a data communications course in NC State’s Data Science and AI Academy (DSA), which she co-designed with the help of a friend. In the course, she helps students build the confidence and skills to translate complex data into meaningful insights. Prillaman is also a member of the College of Sciences Foundation Board and the Alumni Advisory Board and participates in the college’s student mentoring program each year. 

Prillaman recently established the Patricia L. and Barbara A. Prillaman Endowment, DSA’s first legacy endowment. The planned gift will be unrestricted, giving DSA the flexibility to address student needs and create new programming. She is also an active partner on NC State’s annual Day of Giving, most recently leading a special fundraising effort to honor a beloved Sciences staff member who passed away.

In addition to her NC State degree, Prillaman has master’s degrees in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; liberal studies from Duke University; and library and information studies from University of North Carolina Greensboro. 

Outstanding Young Alumnus Award

Matthew Boudreau ’16 is this year’s recipient of the Outstanding Young Alumnus Award, which recognizes accomplished early-career graduates who have excelled professionally or through public service.

Boudreau earned a B.S. in chemistry from NC State and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Nobel Prize winner William Kaelin Jr. at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. In Kaelin’s lab, Boudreau develops faster ways to screen natural compounds for potential cancer treatments. His research brings together chemistry and biology to create new strategies that could lead to practical solutions in oncology. 

Boudreau has won a prestigious fellowship from the National Cancer Institute for his groundbreaking contributions to cancer research. A variety of the anticancer approaches he worked on as a doctoral student are now at various points in the drug development pipeline. Notably, he helped develop targeted treatments for estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, which accounts for nearly 75% of all breast cancer cases. This therapy targets cancer cells without harming healthy ones and may reduce side effects when compared with traditional chemotherapy. 

He recently established the Matthew W. Boudreau Undergraduate Summer Research Award, which supports hands-on research opportunities for undergraduate chemistry students at NC State. 

Student Leadership Awards

The Student Leadership Awards recognize undergraduate seniors and graduate students who actively pursue leadership roles through community service, philanthropy, campus involvement or in the classroom. Prior to 2022, the award only recognized seniors but has since expanded to honor graduate students. 

Emily Phillips is a senior majoring in biological sciences, a Sciences Ambassador and a volunteer at Urban Ministries. She also serves in a leadership role as a CPR instructor and founded the first neuroscience club at NC State. As the club’s first president, she brought freshmen and sophomores to research labs across the university for the first time. She also helped her board members organize an undergraduate research symposium.

Eleanor Burns is a senior majoring in chemistry. She is trombone section leader and social media coordinator in the NC State marching band. She’s also the student coordinator in her campus ministry organization and the youth commissioner on the North Carolina Governor’s crime commission. Burns has also served as president of the Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society, where she created opportunities for students at all levels to participate. She was responsible for drumming up interest in the organization and for planning events.

Louisa Ebby is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mathematics. She has served as treasurer of the Association for Women in Mathematics. She also organized the spring 2025 Sonia Kovalevsky Day event at NC State, which encourages and assists K-12 students to continue studying mathematics. Ebby was among the organizers of the regional Triangle Competition in Math Modeling and her work led to a significant increase in participation from our university. She also revived and led monthly Women in Math lunches and has been a mentor to numerous undergraduate students.

Megan Pike is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemistry. Working in the lab of Goodnight Distinguished Scholar in Molecular Characterization Thomas Theis, she has developed several new operational processes and has implemented project-management tools that have accelerated and focused the research in the lab. She is also involved with NC State’s Comparative Medicine Institute, for which she has added an exciting pitch competition for the CATALYZE entrepreneurship conference. Pike also serves as the Professional Development Chair within the Chemistry Graduate Student Association. In this role, she provides guidance and support to all chemistry graduate students.

Student Leadership Award: Undergraduate Honorable Mentions

Adelaide Nebeker is a senior majoring in mathematics science communication. As president of the Society for Undergraduate Mathematics (SUM Club), Nebeker has grown the club’s membership by reviving its newsletter, restarting outreach with Washington Magnet Elementary and co-creating “Proofs with Pizzazz,” a popular presentation series that helps students learn to write proofs. Nebeker is focused on ensuring SUM’s long-term success by mentoring a successor and building a leadership pipeline for future students.

Lilyanna Hopkins is an honors student in biological sciences who serves as president of the Minority Association for Pre-Health Students (MAPS) and vice president of the Kappa Omicron Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Hopkins founded the MAPS Mentor-Mentee Program to ensure students have guidance on the pre-health path, served as a pre-health peer advisor and worked as a biochemistry teaching assistant. 

Student Leadership Award: Graduate Honorable Mentions

James Robertson is a Ph.D. student in statistics who serves as president of the Statistics Graduate Student Association. Robertson is passionate about organizing games, seminars and community outreach projects, including a collaboration with the local nonprofit Note in the Pocket. Robertson won the Department of Statistics’ 2024-25 Paige Plagge Award for good citizenship.

Ben Hines is a Ph.D. student in physics who has elevated multiple initiatives on campus. Hines transformed a summer research experience with Wake Tech START interns into a professional development program by organizing workshops on scholarships, data analysis and creating research posters. To build community for graduate students on Centennial Campus, Hines founded the ORaCEL Student Organization (OSO), which hosted at least 16 social and networking events in its first year.

This post was originally published in College of Sciences News.