SMHS graduate students pull in several awards and scholarships
Multiple SMHS graduate students have won awards or scholarships of note recently.
In addition to one Department of Biomedical Sciences student, Dawn Cleveland, taking home second place at UND’s 3-Minute Thesis event a few weeks ago, Rashid Ahmad, a doctoral student in the SMHS Department of Indigenous Health, took home second place for his presentation “Centering Families in the Opioid Crisis: A Needs Assessment in Bernalillo County, N.M.” in the virtual/distance students category at UND’s Graduate Research Achievement Day (GRAD) poster competition this week.
Likewise, Muhammad Salahuddin, a research analyst for the SMHS Healthcare Workforce Group who is also a graduate student in UND’s Educational Foundations & Research program, took home first prize in the professional, social sciences, and humanities & art category of the GRAD in-person/on-campus group. Salahuddin’s project was titled “Measuring Faculty Research Competence: How Does Competence and Motivation Predict Faculty Research Success?”
Finally, Sakuntha Gunarathna, a Department of Biomedical Sciences graduate student in Motoki Takaku’s lab, has been given a travel award (the 2025 Biology of Genomes Scholarship) for the upcoming Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s 2025 Biology of Genomes Conference. According to the event’s website, only three graduate students are selected to receive support covering both registration fees and travel expenses.
According to Dr. Takaku, “Sakuntha’s work is being recognized by leading scientists in the field of genome biology, and he has been awarded this prestigious recognition at one of the most renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory meeting series.”
Congratulations, everyone!
