Congratulations, Kiran and Jasmine!

DiSH Lab RAs Kiran Cherian and Jasmine Williams have been awarded the 2019-2020 UC Global Food Initiative Fellowship. Here’s what Jasmine had to say about it, “The Global Food Initiative Fellowship is a space for UC students to collaborate ideas to further work on individual projects, and complete research in order to reach a larger goal of reducing sustainability and nutritiously feed a world population. The initiative allows for students from all UCs to recognize problems and solutions provided thus far, as well as gather students from the same university to work in unison on those issues. My role as a GFI fellow is to continue Dr. Tomiyama’s lab work under the hypothesis: food insecurity status will lead individuals to self-report high ratings of food palatability, especially towards high calorie foods. I will be looking closely into this in order to explore differences in food preferences between food insecure and secure groups.”

Kiran also added, “The UC Global Food Initiative Fellowship funds student-generated research studies and projects that are related to food issues. As a GFI Fellow for the coming academic year, I will be provided with a monetary award of $1000 to support the research project that I plan to work on, which is a nationally representative survey that assesses existing relationships among food insecurity status, stress, and eating behaviors. In addition, I will be able to attend UC-wide activities and interact with GFI Fellows from the other UC schools.”

Congratulations again Kiran and Jasmine!