Geisel researcher Vicki Sayarath remembered for her selfless attitude and sense of drive

BY ARYANNA QUSBA

The Dartmouth Staff

This article was originally published on Jan. 19, 2023.

A sixth-generation Vermonter, Vicki Sayarath dedicated her life to improving the nutrition and health of her community through research, often navigating a male-dominated feld. Before her death on Nov. 14, 2022 at age 61, she spent 17 years conducting research at the Geisel School of Medicine’s Epidemiology department and raised two daughters — Maya and Melanie — with her husband, Bouaketh John Sayarath.

“She was selfless and uplifted countless people throughout her life,” John said.

Melanie Sayarath, John and Vicki’s daughter, said that her mother grew up in the 1970s when it was still uncommon for most young women from her Vermont community to consider higher education after graduating high school.

“She always defed and challenged people’s expectations of her,” Melanie said.

Though her guidance counselor discouraged her from pursuing a college education, Sayarath received a B.S. in nutrition and food sciences from the University of Vermont and then a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Minnesota.

“She developed an incredibly ambitious, resilient and tenacious mind and spirit,” Melanie said of her mother’s education.

Melanie described her mother as a “trailblazer at all diferent junctures in her life.” As a young woman, Sayarath published unprecedented research on nutrition in the rural communities of northeast Vermont. In her professional and personal life, Sayarath pushed for women’s empowerment: She was always determined and resilient and was undeterred by gender-bias in her feld, Melanie said.

After marrying John, who is from Laos, Sayarath committed herself to uplifting the Laotian community in the United States. During the Vietnam War, when the confict spilled over to Laos, Melanie said that her parents supported Laotian families that were torn apart by the war as they established themselves in the United States and “pushed for eforts” to assist Laotian immigration to the United States.

Sayarath, with six generations of local ancestry, was a champion for rural New England in her professional life, according to her family.

“She was really interested in the way that the role of nutrition and diferent environmental factors afect