Simcox wins SACNAS mentorship award

Judith Simcox has been awarded the 2025 SACNAS Distinguished Mentor Award from the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science. This award honors sustained excellence in mentorship. She was honored at SACNAS’ 2025 National Conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Judith Simcox

Simcox is an associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her lab currently focuses on understanding how plasma lipids are regulated and how these lipids signal to control energy expenditure, glucose homeostasis and inflammation. Specifically, she works to uncover the cells that produce plasma lipids and the enzymes that regulate their production. She was named a member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's inaugural class of Freeman Hrabowski Scholars in 2023. She also won the 2024 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Walter A. Shaw Young Investigator Award in Lipid Research.

Simcox has prioritized mentoring and supporting scientists from underrepresented groups since graduate school. At the University of Utah, she helped build the Native American Research Internship as well as co-founded and led the University of Utah SACNAS Chapter. She currently serves as a mentor for the American Indian Science and Engineering Society Chapter at UW–Madison, the Bridging Wisconsin Oneida Science Outreach Group and the Indigenous Graduate Student Organization. She is also the co-director of the Center for Indigenous Research to Create Learning Excellence. For her efforts, she won the 2025 Distinguished Faculty and Staff Postdoc Mentoring Award from the University of Wisconsin–Madison Postdoctoral Association.