Vivian Clarissah Chinoda ’25, Ezekiel Daye ’25, Emi Grady Willis ’25 and Ana Schon SM ’25 earn the prestigious award
This week the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT) publicly honored four students for their arts-related contributions to campus with the 2025 Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Awards.
Launched by CAMIT in 1979 to honor past MIT President Jerome B. Wiesner and Laya Wiesner, the four awards each come with a $2,000 honorarium. This year’s recipients were Vivian Clarissah Chinoda ’25, Ezekiel Daye ’25, Emi Grady Willis ’25 and Ana Schon SM ’25.
Vivian Clarissah Chinoda ’25: Expressing African Identity Through Fashion
Chinoda’s evolution as a designer and creative started with her involvement with MIT’s Black Theater Guild (BTG), designing costumes for productions such as “N’Krumah’s Last Day,” “Shooting the Sheriff,” and the “Young Black Voices” short-play festival, for which she also curated the photo exposition and helped with event logistics.
At the 2023 and 2024 MIT Gala, Chinoda showed off fashion designs focused on afrofuturistic aesthetics, sparking discussions and garnering admiration for how she seamlessly blended modern concepts with traditional African prints. Her work as interior design lead has also been instrumental in shaping the ambiance of the African Students Association’s (ASA) Cultural Night, which attracts more than 600 attendees a year.
Chinoda says that all the behind-the-scenes work she’s seen at MIT arts events has inspired her own energy in creating platforms “for voices to be projected, stories to be told and cultures to be represented.” Classmate Jean Ghislain Billa ’25 applauded her efforts to enrich the experience and representation of African students at MIT. “Vivian’s artistry is more than just fashion and design,” he says. “It is a powerful testament to identity, culture, and belonging, woven into every stitch and space she transforms.”
Chinoda also credited the hard work of the Council of the Arts at MIT (CAMIT) and the music and theater departments. “It’s much easier to nurture an interest when there’s a whole team of experts standing behind you and validating that the work you are doing matters,” she says.
Ezekiel Daye ’25: Engineering Cross-Genre Music
A major contributor to MIT’s music program, Daye has played saxophone in both the Wind Ensemble and the Festival Jazz Ensemble, while also spearheading a string quartet that performed in the style of a hip-hop French overture. Nominator Frederick Harris Jr., who directs both ensembles, credits Daye for his “sensitivity and passion for a broad range of genres, with a particular interest in global music through exploration of the cultural heritage of a variety of indigenous communities.”
Academically Daye has excelled in his work as an electrical engineering and physics double major, music minor and Emerson/Harris Music Scholar. (Ever the engineer, he even developed a custom laser harp for his analog electronics class.) MIT Associate Professor Miguel Zenon describes him as “probably one of the hardest working students I’ve ever had – not just at MIT, but at any music school I’ve worked at or collaborated with.”
Daye also actively engages with the broader community through his support of peers and other ensembles, and regularly performs for elderly community members through his volunteer work.
“MIT has been an incredibly fertile ground for creativity [that] has allowed me to grow as a musician in ways I never thought possible,” says Daye. “It’s a special kind of environment where everyone gives 100 percent of themselves, and in doing so, what emerges is something greater than the sum of its parts.”
Emi Grady-Willis ’25: Lighting up The Arts Scene
Grady-Willis’ campus engagement has impacted virtually all aspects of the performing arts as an actor, dancer, and designer. Her leadership efforts include spearheading the technical and design aspects of the MIT Dance Troupe and serving as president of the lighting design group E33.
She has contributed to multiple theater-department productions as an assistant designer for lighting and projections, and in this spring’s “Antigonick” served as both video engineer and a lead actor. She has also developed her own low-cost automated tracking system for spotlights to automatically follow a performer using ultra-wideband radio waves.
Finishing up her senior year, Grady-Willis has taken on additional opportunities outside of MIT, working on a project at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and a workshop in New York City. “Our department is better off in so many ways because of her contributions, dedication, and care,” says nominator Joshua Higgason, Associate Head of Theater Arts at MIT. “Her leadership and vision have set a precedent for future generations of student artists at MIT.”
Grady-Willis says she deeply appreciates the Institute’s prioritization of the arts and its importance in cultivating well-rounded undergraduates. “Whether it’s in a traditional performance environment like a theater or through an installation piece outside on campus, I’ve been encouraged to explore what it takes to get the MIT community to take a moment to slow down and the benefits that can come when it does so,” she says.
Ana Schon SM ’25: Thinking Outside the (Black) Box
Schon has been a driving force in the music and arts scene at the Media Lab. Her sound-engineering expertise has been central to the success of major performances like “VALIS” (2023) and “Overstory Overture” (2023). Her support of other students has helped empower new artistic voices on campus, as shown by her participation as sound engineer for the 2024 world premiere of “Transmutations,” a project led by flutist-composer Jessica Shand SM ’24.
Her involvement in the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Jeanne R. Johnson Music Innovation Lab showcased her ability to translate artistic vision into hands-on learning experiences for school-aged children.
“The MIT community is deeply committed to experimenting, iterating [and] jumping into the deep end,” says Schon. “Every day I learn how to think outside of the box and relate the work to the context that surrounds it.”
Nominator Kimaya Lecamwasam says that her colleague stands out as a talented artist focused on making musical expression more accessible. Schon’s Artfinity performance “Here…NOW,” for example, aimed to connect artists and audiences to the worlds they inhabit so they can learn from and be present with each other.
“By curating an experience that invites audience members to reflect on their own musical identities and how their listening environments shape them, Ana demonstrates her rare ability to blend artistry, scholarship, and community engagement,” says Lecamwasam, a PhD student at the Media Lab.
The four honorees were acknowledged at a special awards ceremony May 9 at the MIT Samberg Conference Center. The ceremony paid tribute to past MIT President Wiesner, who, while perhaps known best for his Radiation Laboratory work and advocacy for nuclear arms control, was fiercely passionate about promoting the arts. In an MIT News obituary of Wiesner from 1994, the MIT Corporation’s then-Chairman Paul E. Gray said that the Institute “has benefited beyond acknowledgment…from his vision of the ways in which science and technology and the arts and humanities reinforce each other.”
The Council for the Arts at MIT presents several awards annually to MIT students who have demonstrated excellence in the arts.
Written by Adam Conner-Simons
Editorial direction by Leah Talatinian