Berlin ’18, Lim ’18 named valedictorian, salutatorian

Kyle Berlin and Katherine Lim have been selected as the valedictorian and salutatorian, respectively, for the Class of 2018.

University faculty accepted the nominations for the Faculty Committee on Examinations and Standing at their meeting on Monday.

Berlin is a Spanish and Portuguese major from Arroyo Grande, Calif. He is also pursuing certificates in Latin American studies, creative writing, and theatre. For his senior thesis, Berlin undertook two separate projects: He penned a collection of multi-genre short stories centered on the region of Patagonia, and he delivered a lecture on “Sunset Studies” to the University community, creating the name and persona of “renowned scholar” Burl Kylen.

Before he began his academic career at the University, Berlin participated in the Bridge Year Program in Peru. He received the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence in 2014–15, the Freshman First Honor Prize in 2015, and the George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize in 2017.

Berlin has traveled widely for his studies; he spent the summer of 2015 in Namibia for a Princeton Institute for International Regional Studies Global Seminar, studied abroad in Cuba, traveled throughout South America through the Program in Latin American Studies, and spent a summer in Europe for a Dale Summer Award project.

Outside of academics, Berlin has been involved in numerous student organizations ranging from the Princeton Debate Panel to the Beekeeping Club. He has created a documentary program on a church in Trenton for the Trenton Project, given tours on the history of race and protest in Trenton and Princeton, directed shows with Theatre Intime, and worked to build an inclusive campus culture through the group Cuties for Social Justice. Berlin also serves as a residential college adviser in Rockefeller College, and he has written pieces for the Nassau Literary Review and The Daily Princetonian.

Using a Davis Projects for Peace grant, in the summer of 2017 Berlin created a documentary theater show in his hometown, titled “Nice Town, Normal People.” After graduation, Berlin plans to take this show on the road with the Rhizome Theater Company, a nonprofit that he co-founded. He will also train in a type of Brazilian theater-making called Theatre of the Oppressed.

On Tuesday, June 5, Berlin will deliver the valedictory address at the University’s commencement. Lim will deliver the salutatory oration in Latin.

Lim is a computer science major from Atherton, Calif. Her academic interests lie in computer architecture, operating systems, and Latin translation. Lim has studied Latin since middle school.

For the past two years, Lim has conducted research with assistant professor of electrical engineering David Wentzlaff, helping to create an open-source hardware framework called OpenPiton that will allow users to more efficiently conduct their own research. She has interned at the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge.

Lim received an Accenture Prize from the Department of Computer Science in the past year and the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence after her first year. She is a member of Mathey College, participates in a campus knitting circle, and teaches introductory programming classes at the Princeton Public Library.

After graduation, Lim will continue to study computer science in a Ph.D. program at the University of Washington, funded by the Seattle chapter of the ARCS Foundation toward her first three years in graduate school and a National Science Foundation fellowship that starts next year.