The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine
What is your hometown?
Three Lakes, Wisconsin
How or when did you become interested in science and medicine?
I’ve loved science as long as I can remember. I decided that I wanted to be a scientist in the fourth grade, where my teacher taught science with experiments and “magic tricks.” Once I realized someone would pay me for doing that kind of thing every day, I was sold. My interest in medicine came later, in college, when I realized that the scientific questions that fascinated me most were those that pertained to human disease. By pursuing an MD/PhD combined degree, I can hopefully ensure that my scientific pursuits directly benefit patients.
How or why did you choose the University of Iowa to attend medical school?
I did the Summer Undergraduate Research Program here after my junior year of college, and I was surprised at how much I liked the program and the faculty. I applied to lots of places, but ultimately the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine curriculum and the Neuroscience Program faculty won out. The University of Iowa pioneered small group and case-based learning programs in medical school, which were familiar to me from my undergraduate career and I enjoyed that style of learning. For my research interests, the breadth of faculty expertise in both cognitive and molecular neuroscience really appealed to me.
Is there a teacher, mentor or University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine faculty member who has helped shape your education?
The person most instrumental in my education is my research mentor, Dr. Henry Paulson. I started working with him during my summer research program. I had the good fortune to work with him both in his lab and in the clinic, and that experience cemented my decision to pursue an MD/PhD. After entering his lab as a graduate student, he became even more important in shaping my career as a scientist.
What kinds of opportunities or advantages does being a MD/PhD student at Iowa provide? What about challenges?
The environment at Iowa is really supportive and generous. When you’re doing research, it makes a huge difference to have the entire academic community available to you. It was always easy for me to find people to teach me techniques or give me advice on my projects. However, the small size of the University can be a bit of a challenge, because sometimes you have to reach out to other institutions to find the equipment and resources you need.
Please describe your professional goals and interests?
I will continue doing both research and clinical work in neuroscience, most likely in neurology or psychiatry. I’m also interested in global outreach services for mental health and neurological disease, and to that end I will be interning with the World Health Organization’s Mental Health Gap Action Programme this spring. I’d like to find a way to work all of these things together in my future academic career.
What are some of your outside interests?
I love food to an extreme, so I’ve spent a lot of time traveling to restaurants in the communities surrounding Iowa City, like Simone’s Plain and Simple and the Lincoln Café. I have also participated in community-building projects like the Saturday Night Free Movie Series. In general I’m interested in everything, and this community has a lot to offer, so I try to take a piece of all of it.
Do you participate in any community service/outreach projects? If so, what are they and what have your experiences been?
The major community service I participated in, prior to moving to Michigan with my mentor’s lab, was the Free Mental Health Clinic. It was very rewarding to see how we could improve our patients’ health over time, and it really seemed like their functionality and personal happiness increased because of our work together.
Do you have an insight or philosophy that guides you in your work?
A friend of mine told me once that every day when he woke up, he reminded himself to be an instrument of love and not of fear. I suppose if I had to sum up what guides me through everything, that’s it.
If you could change one thing about the world (or the world of medicine), what would it be?
I don’t know that I can select just one thing about the world that I would change; there is so much that needs to be done. Restricting my comments to the world of medicine, I would socialize health care. I believe passionately that health care is a right and not a privilege, and I find it exceedingly frustrating and heartbreaking to see people bankrupted and reduced to poverty by health care costs.
What one piece of advice would you give to students who are interested in applying to medical school?
Be yourself, always. Your personal integrity is the most important thing you have to offer this field, so put it out there first.
What do you see as "the future" of medicine?
Recently, a debate has emerged in neuroscience regarding “cognitive enhancement”, which entails the use of drugs to improve memory and cognitive processing speed in normal healthy people. While I have reservations about this type of drug application, it is interesting to see how we are getting to the point in medicine where we don’t just discuss how to treat disease, but also how to enhance our functionality. Whether or not we like the idea of “performance enhancing drugs”, I think they will increasingly become a part of medicine as we get better at reducing the threat of disease.