Seniors Glen Weyl and Maya Maskarinec were named valedictorian and Latin salutatorian, respectively, at the University faculty meeting Monday night and will deliver speeches at Commencement.
Weyl is an economics major from Los Altos Hills, Calif., and has produced economics papers that have attracted attention from theorists and policymakers in the field, economics professor Hyun Shin, who has served as a mentor to Weyl, said.
"His senior thesis is a very impressive paper on the topic of the theory of two-sided markets; it's a very new topic, and he has made fundamental contributions to that topic," Shin said.
Weyl was approached by the U.S. Department of Justice last summer for advice on the difficult policy decisions required by such two-sided markets, in which lowering prices on one side of the market might raise them on the other, with complicated and ambiguous results, he said.
His research attempted to answer "what we would like to see happening to prices, what would be good in terms of competition or consumer welfare as far as regulation," Weyl explained.
Maskarinec, a classics major from Honolulu, Hawaii, has focused her studies on late antiquity, specifically Rome during its decline in the fourth century A.D.
"I was interested in how people of fourth century Rome thought about their past ... how they [tried] to maintain and relive this idea of Rome as it once was as it was slipping out of their grasp," Maskarinec said.
Aside from classics, Maskarinec is interested in German and art history, and she was awarded the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence in 2005 as well as the 2005-06 Charles A. Steele Prize in the Classics Department.
"Some of my favorite classes have been random and diverse classes [because they were] the classes that have made me think in different ways the most," Maskarinec said.
Weyl and Maskarinec were both informed of their honors by Associate Dean of the College Richard Williams more than a week before the faculty confirmed the decision, they said.
"I received an email from Dean Williams with animated smiley faces that were pretty comforting, but went to meet him with no idea what was coming. He told me I should start writing a speech," Weyl said.
Weyl has earned a variety of other academic achievements during his time at the University, including the George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize, membership in Phi Beta Kappa and two Shapiro Prizes for Academic Excellence.
"What Princeton did more than anything was to open my eyes so I could see the world," Weyl said. "[It showed me] how beautiful a well-functioning society could be."
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