Congratulations to Dr Diego Ayala for receiving the CAIMS 2014 Cecil Graham Doctoral Dissertation Award. The DDA committee has met and unanimously agrees that the 2014 Cecil Graham Doctoral Dissertation Award be given to Dr. Diego Ayala for his thesis titled “Extreme Vortex States and Singularity Formation in Incompressible Flows”. The thesis contains truly novel work that uses optimal control theory and scientific computation to study extreme and singular behavior in the Navier-Stokes equations. The results are important in a variety of applications from atmospheric science to hematology. The committee was impressed with the breadth of the work:the thesis bridges basic methods of analysis with scientific and high performance computing, obtaining new insights into analytical results. Dr. Ayala received his PhD from McMaster University under the supervision of Professor Bartosz Protas in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Dr. Ayala is continuing his research as a PostdoctoralAssistant Professor at the University of Michigan