Every year, during the Annual McKnight Doctoral Fellows Meeting, the Florida Education Fund (FEF) announces the winners of the William R. Jones Outstanding Mentor Awards. After reviewing Sana Nasim’s excellent nomination statement on Ramaswamy’s behalf, the William R. Jones Awards Committee unanimously awarded him the 2017 Outstanding Mentor Award.
Ramaswamy was invited to join McKnight Fellows in a special celebration to honor him, as well as new Ph.D. graduates. As an honoree, he received a plaque and a monetary award for his outstanding contribution to the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program.
“I am humbled to have received a William R. Jones Outstanding Mentor Award by the Florida Education Fund,” said Ramaswamy. “I am honored to attribute this award to my students who continually inspire me, and FIU which shares in the core values of the McKnight program in the promotion of mentorship to underrepresented minorities.”
Under the mentorship of Dr. Ramaswamy, graduate student Sana Nasim has submitted seven conference papers, was awarded a Vasculata 2017 Travel Award ($500), and was awarded an NIH Biomedical Research Initiative Student Research Award ($3000). Under his supervision, she has been able to mentor 6 high school students and 3 high school teachers over the past two summers with different cell culture techniques.“Working with Dr. Ramaswamy, I have been able to get valuable experience/training with different molecular biology techniques, mentoring, teaching and presentation skills, which has been and will help me with my further training as a post-doctoral student,” said Nasim. Together, Ramaswamy and Nasim have submitted 3 papers for journal publications with two being second author and one being the first author.
Congratulations Dr. Ramaswamy!