Sanjana Punyamurthula, received a Provost’s Award for Research and Scholarship at the 2017 Student Research Symposium. The award was for the poster presentation of her Honor’s thesis research (Advisor: Ruth Carper) entitled “Atypical development of the corpus striatum in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder” which was performed at the Brain Development Imaging Laboratory (Director: Axel Müller). The research uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the size and development of the striatum in children and adolescents with autism. The striatum is a deep brain structure important for motor function, repetitive behaviors (such as those seen in autism), reward systems, and higher order cognitive functions.