2025-26 Driggs Travel Quest Awardees
The Driggs Travel Quest Award was created by Benjamin (’96) and Andrea Driggs as a way of giving back to the University of Arizona and strengthening the distinctive Franke Honors College experience. The Driggs family is passionate about enhancing the total student experience. Their vision for the endowment is to provide W.A. Franke Honors College students with resources to travel across the country—or even the world—to conduct research or present their findings, helping them to further differentiate themselves for graduate school and career opportunities.
Since being established in fall of 2025, the Driggs Travel Quest Award has supported eight Franke Honors students as they have pursued travel (up to $1,000) to conferences or other professional development events related to their research.
Wildcat for Life
Benjamin Driggs is the Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer for Phoenix-based Honeywell Aerospace, a global leader in advanced aviation and defense technologies and systems. In this role, he leads strategy, mergers and acquisitions, venture investments, and all commercial functions including sales excellence, marketing, pricing and innovation. In addition to the establishment of the Ben and Andrea Driggs Honors Travel Quest Endowment, In addition to the establishment of the Ben and Andrea Driggs Honors Travel Quest Endowment, Ben and Andrea are avid supporters of scholarships and the Fostering Success program for former foster youth.
Ben was recently a guest on our podcast, It's an Honor, which is hosted by Franke Dean John Pollard. Check out the episode and get to know Ben!
From Campus Community to Industry Innovation with Ben Driggs
Meet the Fall 2025 Student Awardees
Thomas McIvor
Thomas McIvor graduated from the W.A. Franke Honors College at the University of Arizona in December 2025 with a Bachelor’s degree in American Indian Studies and a minor in Future Earth Resilience. His research explores the effects of Columbia River dam development on Indigenous communities, salmon, and cultural lifeways, with a focus on Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice.
With the support of this award, he attended the 68th Annual World Social Science Association Conference in Albuquerque, where he presented his honors thesis, Disrupting the Lifeblood of the River: An Examination of the Columbia River Dams’ Impact on Native American Communities, Salmon Populations, and Indigenous Livelihoods.
Rohini Ghosh
Rohini Ghosh is a senior studying Chemical Engineering with a minor in Statistics and Data Science. She currently serves as President of Engineering Student Council and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Chapter, and has conducted research for four years with Dr. Suchol Savagatrup in the areas of soft materials and device engineering. In her research, Rohini synthesized and characterized polymeric receptors to selectively sense AFB1 in aqueous systems and integrated the polymers in dynamic sensor systems.
With the Driggs Award, she was able to travel to the 2025 AIChE Annual Student Conference in Boston to presented a poster on her research at the undergraduate poster session, earning an award for Third Place in the Environmental Division.
Brooklyn Nunes
Brooklyn Nunes is a junior at the University of Arizona majoring in Medicine, and is a premedical student applying to medical school this cycle.
With the support of the Driggs Honors Travel Grant, she was able to travel to Charlotte, NC for the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine 2026 National Conference on Medical Education. Here, Brooklyn presented her work on founding the CUP Undergraduate Shadowing Program for premedical students to learn at the College of Medicine - Tucson’s Commitment to Underserved People (CUP) Clinics. She explained the benefits of undergraduate involvement in these student-run free clinics and expressed the program's reproducibility to other medical educators.
Isabella Hurst
Isabella Hurst is a third-year Franke Honors student majoring in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and minoring in Entomology. Her recent focus has been learning the practice of extracting DNA sequences from insect specimens in the UAIC. These sequences provide researchers with an alternate way of obtaining species-level identifications that can then–along with associated collection data–be widely shared with other scientists in an online database.
With the support of the Driggs Award, Isabella was able to travel this past November to Portland, Oregon, attending the Entomological Collections Network (ECN) and Entomological Society of America (ESA) 2025 annual meetings.
Meet the Spring 2026 Student Awardees
Nagasriya ("Sriya") Ramisetty
Sriya is a junior Flinn Scholar, studying Physiology and Applied Humanities, with minors in Creative Writing, Education, and a Thematic in Self, Stories, and Society. Throughout her life, Sriya always had an interest in supporting youth mental health, starting with her advocacy for better counseling support at her high school. Since coming to the University of Arizona, her interest has only grown through research, poetry, and art. As an EMG awardee and recently selected JustArts Fellow, she has been conducting research on mental health narratives within the Asian American community to create a research-based art exhibition and poetry collection.
The Driggs Award has supported Sriya's travel to present her work at Duke University for the APAMSA National Conference. She will also travel again this semester at the Health Humanities Consortium in Indianapolis.
Supriya Roy
Supriya Roy is a junior at the University of Arizona studying Optical Sciences and Engineering with a minor in Mathematics. She plans to pursue a PhD in biomedical optics, with the ultimate objective of designing integrated optical systems for clinical use. Supriya is originally from Minnesota and enjoys photography, traveling, writing, dancing, flying, and playing badminton in her spare time.
As an Exploratory Mini-Grant and Driggs Award recipient, Supriya has traveled to the University of Cambridge through the BRAVO! Program. These grants will allow her to continue her research on optical imaging biomarkers to identify esophageal cancer precursor disease states.
Annie Chen
Jakob Villareal
Jakob Villareal is a sophomore studying Neuroscience & Cognitive Science and Philosophy. His research investigates some of the neural and neuroimmunological mechanisms explaining early life stress’ (ELS) status as a risk factor for developing various neuropsychiatric and other disorders throughout life. He looks at non-neuronal cell types, like microglia and astrocytes, and other components of the neuroimmune system that may shape the behavioral outcomes of those with a history of ELS.
With the Driggs travel award, Jakob will be traveling to the 2026 Society for Biological Psychiatry Meeting in New York City.