STANFORD, Calif. - Three Stanford student-athletes – Tami Alade, Blake Parrish and Michelle Xiao – were awarded NCAA Postgraduate Scholarships for their academic and athletic achievements.
NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship winners receive a one-time grant of $10,000. To qualify, they must be in their final year of eligibility and plan to pursue graduate studies within the next year. In addition to maintaining at least a 3.2 grade-point average, they must perform with distinction in their sport and be nominated by their institution's faculty athletics representative.
Alade is a two-time AVCA All-American and two-time NCAA champion as a member of the women's volleyball team. A CoSIDA Academic All-American as a senior, Alade finished her career with the Cardinal as the program's all-time leader in blocks per set (1.55) and third in school history with a .399 attack percentage. The 2018 Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year, she was also a finalist for the Senior CLASS Award and a two-time Pac-12 All-Academic selection.
A native of Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada, Alade has worked with the Stanford Immersion in Medicine Series shadowing Dr. Ronald Cohen in the Neonatal ICU where she gained valuable clinical experience interacting with patients and their parents, engaging in diagnoses and adapting to a medical environment. Alade has also worked with Stanford's Language and Cognition Lab, analyzing and presenting on the ways in which joint attention supports learning across different contexts and language modalities. She was awarded a grant to conduct a research study in the lab under a graduate student. In Stanford's Language Learning Lab, Alade worked under Professor Anne Fernald as a research assistant doing experimental study on early language development. She acted directly in participant recruitment, running experiments with infants and children, and conducted data coding and analysis.
Alade is a human biology major with a 3.58 GPA and plans to enroll in the Master's of Science in Community Health and Prevention Research (CHPR) program with the hopes of ultimately becoming a pediatrician.
Parrish completed his standout career with 152 career goals, including 42 his senior year. A three-time All-America selection by the Association of College Water Polo Coaches, he was named to the group's second team as a senior. He helped lead Stanford to the NCAA Championship match in 2018. The Cardinal, which captured the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation regular-season and tournament titles, finished the year 21-3 overall and ranked No. 2 nationally. The Goleta, California, native, finished fourth on the Stanford roster and 12th in the MPSF in scoring. He scored multiple goals in 15 matches, including four in the NCAA semifinal victory over UC San Diego.
Parrish was the recipient of the NCAA's Elite 90 Award, honoring the student-athlete with the highest GPA in the NCAA Championships. A four-time Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches Academic All-American and Mountain Pacific Sports Federation academic honoree, Parrish was also recognized as a CoSIDA At-Large Academic All-District selection as a junior. Parrish has volunteered for Stanford water polo's 'Club Day' as well as his fraternity's homeless breakfast feeds.
Parrish carries a 3.84 GPA in computer science with a focus in artificial intelligence. He plans to apply to Stanford's coterm program for symbolic systems, which is a path of interdisciplinary study that combines the technical computer science skills with psychology and linguistics theories that relate well to frontier studies in artificial intelligence.He plans to pursue a career in management in a technical field.
Xiao, a native of Omaha, Nebraska, was named Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year as a senior in 2018. A member of the Pac-12 All-Academic first team in 2016, 2017 and 2018, Xiao earned the 2017 Elite 90 Award, given to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative grade-point average at the College Cup, as well as 2017 CoSIDA Academic All-America first team honors. In 82 career appearances, she scored 21 goals with 11 assists, including career highs in goals (8) and assists (6) in 2017 on her way to All-Pac-12 second team honors.
A frequent volunteer at the East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring program (EPATT) and Stanford's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, Xiao currently conducts research on campus under the guidance of Dr. Geoff Abrams, studying the effects of microRNA's on tendinopathy. As part of Stanford's Bio-X USRP program, Xiao spent time in Stanford's Soft Tissue Biomechanics Lab (STBL) analyzing MRI of knee cartilage to detect early osteoarthritic changes. During the summer of 2016, Xiao spent time in the medicinal chemistry research lab at the University of Nebraska Medical Center working on synthesizing small molecules that could treat Alzheimer's Disease. She also has a paper published in the Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters Journal titled "Design and synthesis of new piperidone grafted acetylcholinesterase."
A biomechanical engineering major with a 4.03 GPA, Xiao plans to attend medical school in the fall of 2020 after developing an interest in the field through her own experiences with injuries. Long term, Xiao would like to become an orthopedic surgeon.
Stanford's overall total of NCAA postgraduate scholarship recipients is now 170.