Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545202
56 S U M M E R 2 0 2 6 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y M E E T T H E W I N N E R S In its 12th year, the CAS Student Recognition Award is open to any student enrolled and in good standing at an accredited college or university. Students may be pursuing any major but should have a demonstrated interest and experience in production and/or post-production sound for film and television. Our industry is in very good hands. The high quality of the applications and the obvious love of the craft that our applicants demonstrated in their submissions speaks to the continued evolution of sound mixing. This is something I have been doing for more than 25 years and all the fun and joy I get from it has made this a truly wonderful experience that I see being continued by these outstanding students. Guitar Center Music Foundation and Custom House sponsored the award, and prizes were given in the amounts of $5,000 to the winner and $1,000 to each of the other finalists. All finalists received a valuable collection of software and other gifts from these generous companies: Acon Digital, Avid, Halter Technical, K-Tek, Krotos Studio, McDSP, Orca, ShotDeck, Shure, Todd-AO, Universal, and Zaxcom. CAS STUDENT RECOGNITION AWARD WINNER MINGXI XU by Peter Kelsey CAS I would like to thank everyone who participated in this year's Student Recognition Award, from the applicants and their teachers and mentors to the sponsors and especially to the CAS members who donated their time to judge. The award was presented by SRA Committee Chair Sherry Klein CAS, Guillermo Moya (last year's winner), and "Weird Al" Yankovic, who had great fun with his part of the proceedings. The 2025 nominees: Joseph Crews of Belmont University Aidan Jones of Savannah College of Art and Design Linnan Liu of University of Southern California Evan Nowack of Chapman University Mingxi Xu of National Film and Television School Mingxi Xu was this year's recipient. Mingxi accepted the award with grace even though she had flown in from England, which is where the school is located, arriving that day. I wanted to find out about Mingxi's sound journey, so I sent her some questions and received the following responses. Graham Hartstone and Mingxi Xu