Sanique South, a postdoctoral scholar in the Willett Lab, received both the Translational Science Research Award and the 2024 Women in Nephrology Research Award while attending the Network of Minority Health Research Investigators (NMRI) 22nd Annual Workshop, held on April 17-19, 2024, in Bethesda, MD. The awards recognized South for her exemplary poster presentation, "Predictive Model of Human Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Therapeutic Efficacy in Post Traumatic Osteoarthritis Treatment."

South is currently developing new regenerative medicine approaches to treat osteoarthritis. She received her Ph.D. in Nutrition from Texas Woman’s University, and has degrees in Health Education, Dietetics, and Biology. Most recently, Sanique was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.

Participation at the annual NMRI workshop is through a selective process and is granted to promising minority investigators. The NMRI was established by The Office of Minority Health Research Coordination of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and serves to encourage and facilitate participation of researchers interested or actively conducting research to address health disparities and advance health equity and to increase the overall diversity of the biomedical research workforce.