David Akoh, Ryan Anthony Bahlous-Boldi to Receive 2025 21st Century Leader Award
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Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences graduating seniors David Akoh and Ryan Anthony Bahlous-Boldi have been named among the ten recipients of the university's 21st Century Leaders Awards, to be presented at Commencement on May 16, 2025.
Akoh earned a bachelor’s degree in informatics with a concentration in data science. A devoted Christian, he has been dedicated to the betterment of campus life and fostering a jovial space of belonging over the course of his college career. He has united many religious organizations, both on and off campus, by leading the planning committees for multiple public events, including InterMinistry Worship Night in 2024 and Carry the Love and Set Ablaze in 2025. As president and choir director of UMass Gospel Choir, he has created arrangements for the choir to perform at the First Annual Gospel Festival at UMass Dartmouth and A Better Chance (ABC) Benefit Concert in Amherst.
Akoh is also a founder and treasurer of the UMass chapter of The Impact Movement, a campus ministry organization for discipleship and spiritual growth that was named “New Chapter of the Year” by the national organization during its end-of-year conference. Through his position, he started Iron Sharpens Iron, a collaborative space for students to learn from and lean on one another.
In addition, Akoh is a member of the Manning Undergraduate Student Impact Council, a selective student committee for the College of Information and Computer Sciences, and he has worked as a resident assistant and interned for multiple businesses.
After graduation, he plans to work in business analytics.
Bahlous-Boldi, a Commonwealth Honors College student and computer science major, was born in Boston and attended high school in Dubai. Bahlous-Boldi got started on research at a very early stage: With the support of his UMass Amherst research mentors, Professor Lee Spector and Professor Scott Niekum, he has played a significant role in contributing to our understanding of artificial intelligence and reinforcement learning. He has published numerous papers, including a co-first author journal article, first author conference/workshop papers, and first author poster papers. For this work, he has traveled around the world to represent UMass Amherst at conferences in Lisbon, Portugal; Melbourne, Australia; New Orleans; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Vancouver, Canada. His research contributions resulted in his being selected as a Goldwater Scholar and as a Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Pioneer at the international ACM/IEEE HRI ’25 conference.
Concurrent with his studies, Bahlous-Boldi rebranded the UMass Machine Learning Club into MassAI, the university’s leading artificial intelligence club, where he served as president for two years. At the 2022 ProjectX ML Research Competition at the University of Toronto, he led a team of undergraduate students to victory, with Team UMass winning a cash prize of $20,000 for their paper “Recommendation Diversity Worth Caring About.”
Balhous-Boldi will pursue a doctoral degree in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
This year’s undergraduate recipients of the 21st Century Leaders Award were chosen in recognition of their strong academic records and exemplary achievements. They also further distinguished themselves through intellectual accomplishments and will be recognized for the prestige and honor they bring to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, both as undergraduates and as alumni joining the larger community.
This story was originally published by the UMass Amherst Office of News and Media Relations.