The MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) has named third-year PhD candidate Odinaka Kingsley Eze the winner of the 2026 Benjamin Siegel Writing Prize.
The 2025-2026 STS Committee on Prizes and Awards— Professors Robin Scheffler, Oliver Rollins, and Ishani Saraf— highly praised Aka’s paper, “A Rapid Course to Death: Cerebrospinal Meningitis and Epidemic Seasonality in Northern Nigeria,1905–1939.” In their prize citation, the committee remarked that his “lucid and deeply researched” account of epidemic response “reflects the interplay of the biological basis of the disease as a rapid, fatal, and environmentally mediated condition with the colonial and post-colonial structures of public health and biomedical research in Nigeria.”
Awarded annually by the STS Program, the Siegel Writing Prize was established in 1990 by family and friends of Benjamin Siegel, SB ’38, PhD ’40 to honor his memory. It recognizes a exemplary recent paper of fifty pages or less, and is open to graduate students from any department or school at the Institute.
Congratulations, Aka, on this recognition!