» Speakers

The Rackham Graduate Exercises ceremony includes keynote remarks by guest speakers.

2025 Rackham Graduate Exercises Speaker

Victor J. Dzau

President of the US National Academy of Medicine

Graduate Speakers

Sauda Nabukenya

Doctor of Philosophy in History, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

Sauda Nabukenya’s research concerns the history of law, constitutions, gender, class and property relations in colonial and post-colonial Africa, and she earned her PhD in History at U-M as a Mellon/ACLS Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar. She holds a master’s in history from Makerere University in Uganda, where she wrote a thesis focused on the politics of the Constitution-making process in Uganda from 1959-1995. Drawing on more than 150,000 court records that she personally discovered, organized, and catalogued during archival work in Uganda, her PhD research project revealed how ordinary individuals influenced the content and application of law. Sauda is committed to preserving vernacular archives and overlooked histories of ordinary people in African legal history. After graduation, she will join the faculty at Utah State University as an assistant professor of African History.

Antara Das Green

Master of Science in Environment & Sustainability, School for Environment and Sustainability

Master of Science in Engineering in Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

Antara Das Green aims to help lead the charge toward clean energy and sustainable living. At U-M, her research explored how electric vehicles hold value over time. Antara previously earned her Bachelor of Science in Electronic Engineering Technology from Pittsburg State University, in Pittsburg, Kansas, in 2019; and while earning masters degrees in both environmental sustainability and mechanical engineering at U-M, she served as SEAS student government’s academic chair; worked as a program assistant for the U-M Alumni Association; and taught courses as a graduate student instructor. Antara also worked for eight months as a program management intern at Tesla, Inc. in 2024. After spending part of the summer in Ann Arbor, she plans to head to the West Coast to work as a project manager for an automotive company.