1st Black Valedictorian Named In Princeton University's History

PRINCETON, NJ — Princeton University has named its first black valedictorian in its 274-year history.

Nicholas Johnson was named as valedictorian for the Class of 2020 and will participate in the university's virtual commencement on May 31. An in-person ceremony will be held in May 2021.

"My favorite memories of my time at Princeton are memories of time spent with close friends and classmates engaging in stimulating discussions — often late at night — about our beliefs, the cultures and environments in which we were raised, the state of the world, and how we plan on contributing positively to it in our own unique way," Johnson said.

While attending the University, Johnson's senior thesis focused on developing high-performance, efficient algorithms to solve a network-based optimization problem that models a community-based preventative health intervention designed to curb the prevalence of obesity in Canada.

During his senior year, Johnson also worked as a software engineer in machine learning at Google’s California headquarters.

Among his academic honors, Johnson is a recipient of the Class of 1883 English Prize for Freshmen in the School of Engineering, a two-time recipient of the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence, and co-recipient with Sommers of the Class of 1939 Princeton Scholar Award. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in fall 2019 and to Tau Beta Pi in 2018, where he served as president of the Princeton Chapter in 2019.

After graduation Johnson's education plans are not done. He plans to spend this summer interning as a hybrid quantitative researcher and software developer at the D. E. Shaw Group before beginning Ph.D. studies in operations research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in fall 2020.

He will also be pursuing certificates in statistics and machine learning, applied and computational mathematics, and applications of computing.

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