The Design Studies Thesis Prize is given annually for the best thesis by a Master in Design Studies student. Often, the Thesis Prize recognizes distinct methodologies of design research and is awarded to multiple students for separate projects.

2020
Angela Mayrina, MDes Art, Design, and the Public Domain
“A Guidebook to an Empty Land: Kalimantan and the Shadows of the Capital”
Karan Saharya, MDes Critical Conservation
“In the Name of Heritage: Conservation as an Agent of Differential Development, Spatial Cleansing, and Social Exclusion in Mehrauli, Delhi”

2019
Isaac Dov Kornblatt-Stier, MDes Critical Conservation
“Architecture for a New World: Louis Kahn and Philadelphia”
Malinda Seu, MDes Art, Design, and the Public Domain
“Cyberfeminism Catalog 1990–2020”
Maggie Tsang, MDes Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology
“Lines in The Sand: Rethinking Private Property On Barrier Islands”

2018
Jiabao Li, MDes Technology
“TransVision: Exploring the State of the Visual Field”
Enrique Aureng Silva Estrada, MDes Critical Conservation
“Critical intervention: the liminality of earthquakes, fragments, and palimpsests as alternatives to preservation in Mexico”

2017
Gabriel Munoz Moreno and Santiago Serna Gonzalez, MDes Energy and Environments
“Sovereignty on Stilts: Drawing a Genealogy of Extra-Territorial Urbanization along the Mudflats of the Tropical Belt”