University of Michigan professors Samuel Bagenstos and Carolyn Kuranz are recipients of the 2025 presidential awards for public engagement.

The awards recognize the recipients’ demonstrated commitment to public service, contributions to significantly impact society through national and state leadership, and efforts to address the challenges communities face every day.

U-M President Domenico Grasso plans to present the awards to Bagenstos and Kuranz at the President’s Symposium on Research Impact and Policy Leadership at 11:30 a.m. March 11 at the Michigan League. This new event will feature an exhibit of public impact work from all colleges, schools, regional campuses and some select centers.

“Professors Bagenstos and Kuranz are shining examples of the transformative impact that U-M faculty make on the world around us with their scholarship and service,” Grasso said.

President’s Award for Public Impact: Samuel Bagenstos

Bagenstos, a professor in the Law School and Ford School of Public Policy, specializes in civil rights, labor and employment law, health law and governance. He’s advocated for farmworkers, disabled people facing discrimination when seeking lifesaving care, foster kids, seniors who need affordable medications and all Americans during the pandemic.

“Professor Bagenstos’ work as a professor and public intellectual and leading critical government agencies during the COVID pandemic was instrumental in galvanizing our nationwide response in a time of crisis and ensuring access to medical care among the most vulnerable, embodying the President’s Award for Public Impact,” wrote his nominators.

During the Biden administration, Bagenstos served as general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget and then general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services. In those roles, he:

• Played a central role in writing new, explicit regulations making clear that discrimination against disabled patients in medical decision making violated Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
• Helped to draft and implement the American Rescue Plan Act, President Biden’s signature COVID relief law.
• Helped build the infrastructure to get the then-new COVID vaccine shots in arms across the country. He led the drafting of regulations across the federal government to promote vaccinations and masking and helped multiple federal agencies get relief funds to state and local governments.

“I’ve tried to use my professional training to be able to help people in ways that I can, and obviously being a professor at the University of Michigan gives me a particular platform to help bring my expertise to the world at times when it’s really needed,” Bagenstos said. “I never thought of academic work as a purely inward-focused intellectual enterprise.

“I think that what I’m here to do is generate ideas that are hopefully going to be useful to the world, and sometimes I can make those ideas useful to the world by engaging very directly. And so that’s what I’ve tried to do the whole time I’ve been a professor.”

In an earlier stint with the federal government, Bagenstos was an appointee in the U.S. Department of Justice, where he served as the principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights. He worked on the 2010 Americans with Disabilities Act regulations update and led the government’s enforcement of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Olmstead v. L.C., which guarantees people with disabilities the right to live and receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate.

Bagenstos’ nomination was supported by Ekow Yankah, associate dean for faculty and research at the U-M Law School, Sharon Block of Harvard Law School, Sabeel Rahman of Cornell Law School and Chaquita Brooks-LaSure of the Century Foundation.

President’s Award for National and State Leadership: Carolyn Kuranz

Kuranz, professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences and of applied physics, is an experimental plasma physicist and studies high-energy-density plasmas at major laser facilities, including the National Ignition Facility and the Omega Laser Facility.

Early in her career, she got some unsolicited advice to not seek out public engagement activities as it was seen as “a waste of time.” She’s glad she didn’t listen.

“Early on, I was asked to be on a committee about a future direction for fusion energy sciences and plasma physics, and I realized if scientists aren’t asking for what they want and telling funding agencies what they think is important, you definitely aren’t going to get it,” Kuranz said.

Since 2019, Kuranz has served on the Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee, the nation’s primary advisory body guiding federal fusion energy research. She co-led the community planning process for the Fusion Energy Sciences Long-Range Strategic Plan, which set national research priorities for the next decade and informed federal investment strategies.

Her leadership also has been central to high-level reports for National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, including workshops on plasma science facilities, basic plasma science user facilities, measurement innovation, inertial fusion energy, plasma astrophysics and high-energy-density laboratory plasma needs.

“We are at a public university, but it’s a big, elite university, so sometimes I can feel disconnected from our public mission,” Kuranz said. “But advising the federal government and National Laboratories is a way that I can use my expertise to serve the public, and I think it is really important. And of course, in the current funding climate, it’s even more important for scientists to communicate what it is we do and why it’s for the public good.”

Kuranz studies nuclear fusion science. It’s a phenomenon that happens in stars and it powers the sun. Our current nuclear power plants are powered by fission. The plasmas she studies can be applied to fundamental astrophysics, to zero carbon energy solutions and to national security.

“Kuranz has provided sustained, dedicated and influential national leadership that exemplifies the University of Michigan’s public mission,” her nominators wrote. “Through her service to federal agencies … she has shaped national research priorities, strengthened U.S. scientific capabilities, and advanced the resilience and security of society beyond what is expected of her scholarly role.”

At U-M, Kuranz has leveraged her national experience to build stronger institutional connections. As chair of the National Laboratory Advisory Committee for the Vice President for Research, she led a year-long effort to enhance U-M engagement with U.S. national laboratories.

She was nominated for the President’s Award by Todd Allen, professor and chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the College of Engineering; Mark Kushner, professor of electrical engineering and computer science; Bradford Orr, associate vice president for research in natural sciences and engineering; and Karthik Duraisamy, professor and director of the Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering.

“I’m just thrilled and honored,” Kuranz said. “I’m excited for my colleagues and students to know about this part of my work because a lot of people are familiar with what I teach in the classroom or the research that I do, but they don’t necessarily know this part of it. I’m pretty sure I’m going to get some emails that are like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you did this, which is fun too, right?”