When Clara Sava-Segal thinks about the brain, she gets excited. "It is hard not to think it is the coolest organ once you see what it can do," she said. That sense of wonder has defined her path through the Guarini School's Cognitive Neuroscience PhD program, and this spring it earned her the 2026 Hannah T. Croasdale Award, presented at Investiture by Dean Jon Kull.
"Clara exemplifies what it means to be a scholar," Kull said. "She demonstrates intellectual curiosity, dedication, and a commitment to the pursuit of new knowledge — and she brings that same passion to her teaching."
The Croasdale Award honors a graduating doctoral student who exemplifies intellectual curiosity, dedication to new knowledge, and excellence in teaching. In Clara, the selection committee found all three.
Her dissertation explores how people derive meaning from the world, specifically how individuals interpret the same experiences differently, and how those interpretations shape memory and behavior. The project draws on neuroscience, psychology, and computational approaches and has spun off in multiple directions, including a collaboration with Dartmouth's Hood Museum, where Clara found that art curators were asking entirely different questions about perception that nonetheless illuminated her own. "That kind of proliferation and pursuit of multiple directions is probably what defines me most," she said.
Clara came to cognitive neuroscience by what she calls "a genuinely winding path," moving from lab to lab, following whatever felt missing or most exciting. A turning point came during a position at Stanford Neurology where she worked directly with epilepsy patients. Watching the range of behavioral effects produced by different brain disruptions, ranging from dissociation to motor changes, made the brain's complexity more personal and more urgent. She arrived at Dartmouth not knowing, by her own estimate, roughly 20 percent of the terms now in her dissertation.
She leaves with a publication record that includes the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and an NIH predoctoral fellowship. This fall she will begin an independent postdoctoral fellowship at Yale's Wu Tsai Institute for Neuroscience.
Her commitment to teaching runs deep. She traces this interest back to her grandmothers, both teachers, and to a conviction that people outside traditional research spaces "often bring the most interesting perspectives once they're in the room." For the past several years she has designed and taught courses for retirees and older adults in the Upper Valley, work she calls "one of the most genuinely joyful parts of my PhD." She recalls a student who told her they had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and had enrolled to understand what was happening to them. "That adds reality to the research," she said, "and keeps me on my toes in the best way."
She received the Croasdale Award, she said, as a genuine surprise. Some of its past recipients are among the scientists she most admires. "Being counted among them is something I don't take lightly."
