We are thrilled to announce that Lisa Chick, an
undergraduate researcher at the Stein Institute
for Research on Aging, has been awarded the
2019 Silagi Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Aging Research.
Chick contributed to the Successful AGing
Evaluation (SAGE) study, Schizoprenia and
Aging Study, and collected the qualitative
interviews for the IBM Study—all while being
a full-time student at UC San Diego. She also
published in the Successful Aging newsletter
and remained very active in the community.
Chick graduated from UC San Diego with a
bachelor’s of science in physiology and neuroscience.
She joined AmeriCorps, a voluntary
civil society program engaging adults in public
service work, with a goal of “helping others
and meeting critical needs in the community”
and will volunteer in a school in Denver. She
plans to attend a medical school the following
year, and we wish her all the best.
The Dr. Selma Silagi Award honors the late
research scientist who moved to San Diego
after retiring as professor emeritus from
Cornell University in 1987. Dr. Selma Silagi
received her PhD in genetics from Columbia
University, served as a research associate
at Rockefeller University, and continued her
basic research
in cancer until
her retirement
from Cornell
University in
1987 when she
moved with
her husband,
Robert, to San
Diego. She is
best known
for her work
in 1966 when she used a mouse model to
change malignant melanoma cells into nonmalignant cells and back again. She died in 1998.
The Dr. Selma Silagi Award at UC San Diego
was established in 1999 by her family.