Nelly Amador ’96, Ph.D. ’02, M.D. ’04

---

 

Having received the Outstanding Senior Award (B.S. neuroscience, 1996) when she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Highest Departmental Honors in her major, Nelly Amador is the first person to have received both the UCLA Alumni Association’s Outstanding Senior Award and Outstanding Graduate Student Award (Ph.D. neuroscience, 2002).

Amador was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Biological Science for the tenure of her doctoral studies, an honor bestowed upon her as one of the 80 most promising young medical researchers in the country. Indicative of her stellar research are several published papers, one in Nature and two in the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Playing an integral role in the education of future doctors and scientists, has served as a teaching assistant for neuroanatomy in both the UCLA School of Medicine and department of neuroscience, and as a member of the Dr. Ralph J. Bunche Scholarship and Outreach committees and more than a dozen UCLA scholarship committees, including the UCLA Distinguished Bruin Award Committee, the UCLA Alumni Awards Community Service Award Committee and the UCLA College Honors Scholarship Committee. She was one of the youngest members of the UCLA Alumni Academy and a reviewer for the Lippincott and Williams Medical Review Books.

In addition, Amador was one of the first recipients of the UCLA Women for Change Student Leadership Award and was honored by the President of the United States the past three years with the President’s Student Leadership Award.

Amador’s undergraduate academic career at UCLA was exceptional and her list of awards staggering. She was a three-time recipient of the Howard Hughes Honors Undergraduate Research Fellowship, recipient of the Dr. Ralph J. Bunche Educational Enhancement Award and a National Science Foundation Research Grant recipient for three years.

“An impressive performance for any graduate student, but unheard of from an undergraduate,” said the director of the Brain Research Institute at UCLA of Amador’s presentation at the recent annual meeting of the Society of Neuroscience, a meeting which gathers about 20,000 neuroscientists from all over the world. One of those scientists equally at home in life sciences and social studies, Amador was one of the very few undergraduate students attending and the only one presenting as first author.

Indicative of her stellar scholastic record was her selection as a 1995 UCLA Distinguished Scholar. In addition, she received the Dr. Ralph J. Bunche Leadership Award for her contribution of time and energy to UCLA students and the academic community. She also holds the distinction of being a member of the Golden Key National Honor Society, and received the prestigious Namberg Honors Research Award and the University of California Presidential Undergraduate Fellowship.

Within the UCLA community, Amador was a founder and one of five student directors of Students in Support of CARE and the CARE Mentor Program, which paired entering freshmen with upperclassmen who guide them through their first year at UCLA. She also served as a member of the UCLA Guardian Angels and an advisor to incoming Alumni Scholars. At the same time, she volunteered at both the Glendale Memorial and Glendale Adventist hospitals.