Nutrition
Outstanding Graduate Student
The Outstanding Graduate Student Award is given annually to graduate students who have distinguished records within their programs, shown leadership qualities on campus and worked for the improvement of our College.
The nutrition department is pleased to present Simindokht Aliabadi with the 2021 Outstanding Nutrition Graduate Student Award for her academic and research excellence. Simindokht joined our program in the fall of 2019 after having completed her bachelor's degree in nutrition and dietetics from California State University, where she excelled in a research lab and published as an undergraduate student. Once at the University of Nevada, Reno, Simindokht’s academic excellence was clear, as she excelled in the classroom as one of the top performing students that could grasp challenging concepts regarding human metabolism and metabolic disease. Not only was Simindokht an excellent student, but she was a considerable help as a teaching assistant for the Department of Nutrition’s Introduction to Nutrition class that serves over 800 students. Here, Simindokht was responsible for teaching and evaluating students in the Department’s nutrition labs. Lastly, Simindokht was an excellent scholar, working in Dr. Yumei Feng-Earley’s research laboratory in the School of Medicine studying the neuronal mechanisms that control hypertension and metabolic disease. Working with Dr. Feng-Earley, Simindokht was a co-author on a manuscript published in Frontiers in Physiology and has presented her research at Experimental Biology, which brings together approximately 20,000 scientists from around the world. Most recently, an abstract she authored was selected for the Physiological Reports Graduate Student Award in Neural Control and Autonomic Regulation by the Neural Control and Autonomic Regulation Section of the American Physiological Society. Given her commitment and excellence in research, Simindokht will be continuing in Dr. Feng-Earley’s lab as a Ph.D. student in the Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology program starting in the fall of 2021. We’re excited to watch Simindokht grow as a researcher and are excited to congratulate Simindokht Aliabadi as the Outstanding Nutrition Graduate Student for 2021.