Computer Science Student Bohan Li Selected for 2025 M.S. Ghausi Medal

The University of California, Davis, College of Engineering has announced Bohan Li, who will graduate this year with dual Bachelor of Science degrees in computer science and applied physics, as the recipient of the 2025 M.S. Ghausi Medal. The award is the college's highest honor given to one outstanding graduating senior.

The award is named after the College of Engineering's third dean, Mohammed S. Ghausi. During his term as dean, Ghausi championed the expansion of the Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement, or MESA, program, designed to serve educationally disadvantaged and minority students. In 1991, he created the Women in Engineering program, the first of its kind in the UC system. 

"These four years have been a mixed experience — every year I had very different expectations for what I should do," Li said. "There was a lot of failure and rejection along the way. At the end of this journey, this is a recognition of my efforts, contributions and thinking throughout my undergraduate studies." 

Despite the heavy courseload of a double major in two colleges, Li has maintained a status of academic excellence, earning the Regents Scholarship — UC Davis' most prestigious scholarship — and a 4.0 GPA. 

In his second year at the university, Li was selected as an emerging scholar in the Mentorship for Undergraduate Research Participants in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences and began research in the Department of Chemistry, co-advised by Professor of Chemistry Davide Donadio — who also serves on the graduate programs for chemical engineering and materials science and engineering — and Associate Professor of Chemistry Kristie Koski. 

In his research, Li used computer simulations and mathematics to better understand the results of experiments on the 2D material silicon telluride. Li then used a quantum physics method called density functional theory to determine how it changes phases. 

His efforts resulted in his first-author paper, "High-pressure structural behavior of silicon telluride Si2Te3 nanoplates," which was published in the journal Physical Review B in April. Li earned two awards for presenting this work at the Larock Undergraduate Research Conference and the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society Far West Section ​​and spoke at the American Physical Society 2025 Global Summit in March. 

While conducting these talks, Li noticed that undergraduate researchers conducting theoretical work were few and far between. During a presentation to undergraduates, he took the opportunity to share tips on how to engage in theoretical research, aiming to make the subject more approachable. This is but one example of his service to fellow students. 

Throughout his four years at UC Davis, Li exemplified M.S. Ghausi's commitment to promoting STEM education. After completing a summer computer science course at UC Berkeley, Li volunteered to tutor others in the course for that academic year; he has also tutored students in calculus, physics​ and​ chemistry at UC Davis through the Academic Assistance and Tutoring Centers. 

Additionally, Li has worked as a part-time editor for the education resource platform LibreTexts, writing solutions for over 500 exercises and programming them into auto-graded example problems exercises to aid other students in their education in subjects like physics, computer science and chemistry.

In the future, Li aims to transform STEM education at its core by designing an experimental curriculum to introduce computational techniques into physics and chemistry education in self-exploratory and interactive ways to establish a better baseline understanding of the principles and facilitate interdisciplinary learning. 

Upon graduation, Li will take the first step toward that future goal, joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in computational materials science and engineering. There, he will study cutting-edge machine learning techniques and numerical methods and apply them to materials science and engineering. 

"I really appreciate UC Davis and California for giving me a space to learn and try lots of new things and eventually find my future goal," Li said. "In this uncertain epoch, it gives me certainty."