2015 P&S Graduates: Meet a Few of the Newest Physicians
More than 150 College of Physicians & Surgeons students received MD degrees in ceremonies on May 20. Meet a few of the graduates, who discuss their P&S experiences and their plans after medical school.
Aliaa Abdelhakim: Adds an MD to Her PhD from MIT
Aliaa Abdelhakim has a foot in several worlds. Born in Saudi Arabia, she was raised in Kuwait, where her parents—physicians from Egypt—practiced medicine during and after the first Gulf War. She studied biochemistry at McGill, in Montreal, and eventually earned a PhD at MIT. During a postdoctoral fellowship, she studied rotavirus, a common and potentially lethal virus that largely targets children, while working as a medical interpreter in Arabic.
Rebecca Bausell: Grew Up Discussing Medical Research at the Dinner Table
The weeks leading up to Match Day are a time of suspense for medical students. But for Rebecca Bausell, the suspense was compounded by another factor: She was pregnant with twins and due any minute. “It’s hard to pick one thing in particular to be excited about,” she says. “There’s so much in the air.”
Robert “Mack” Brickley and Alanna Boyajian: Mixing Medicine with Adventure
Before Alanna Boyajian and Mack Brickley met in their first year at P&S, they both decided to take time off after college to be sure medical school was the right choice. Read more.
Adam De Fazio: Former Lawyer, Future Urologist
After Adam De Fazio finished college at Columbia, he attended law school and became a corporate lawyer focusing on mergers and acquisitions. Read more.
Ezinne and Ukachi Emeruwa: Sisters Head to Residencies on East and West Coasts
Sisters Ukachi and Ezinne Emeruwa have shared a roof throughout most of their lives. They played basketball together in high school, went to Princeton together as undergrads, and shared quarters and emotional support at Columbia P&S.
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Mark J. Harris: Using the Columbia-Bassett Program to See the Bigger Picture
As one of the 10 members of the inaugural class of the Columbia-Bassett Program, Mark J. Harris spent his clinical year studying how medicine is delivered in a place altogether different from New York City: Cooperstown, N.Y., population 1,834. The Columbia-Bassett Program allows students to follow patients over the course of a year as they move among inpatient and outpatient services throughout the large Bassett Healthcare Network.
Eugene Jang: Parents Resisted the Idea of Medical School
Right after Eugene Jang graduated from college, his maternal grandparents died within months of each other. “It was the first time I was really exposed to hospitals and doctors,” he says. “I was taken aback by how much difference a caring physician, or even a medical student, can have on patients and their families.”
Naikhoba Munabi: Global Perspective is Important
Naikhoba Munabi comes from a lineage of physicians that goes back four generations, to Africa, where her parents were born and trained. Her mother, a neonatologist from Nigeria, and her father, a Ugandan specialist in reproductive health, first met in Nigeria, then serendipitously ran into each other again while doing fellowships in the United States. They married in Nigeria and eventually settled and raised their family in Philadelphia. Read more.
Katie Nash: A Change in Focus
Medicine was not Katie Nash's original plan, but she became fascinated with health care while studying the history of public health in the UK.
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Jonathan Salik: A Holistic Approach to Education
In the ICU, where Jonathan Salik hopes someday to practice critical care cardiology, patients, families, and physicians make difficult health care decisions. The questions are philosophical and ethical in nature. “What defines ‘futile care’?” says Mr. Salik. “Especially when resources are limited, who decides what is ‘futile’? We spend most of medical school learning to diagnose and treat illnesses, yet often the hardest questions are not merely medical; they are social, ethical, moral, even legal.”
Hanjay Wang: “I cannot imagine a more fulfilling career path”
As conductor and co-founder of the CUMC Symphony Orchestra, Hanjay Wang is adept at managing a multitude of parts that coalesce into a whole. This might be traced back in part to his love of biology, which he studied as an undergraduate at Harvard. “How could one describe the mechanisms of life on a molecular level?” says Dr. Wang. “How do the smallest components add up to what we call life or contribute to a disease? I think it’s remarkable that all of life as we know it can be described using the same genetic code and molecular mechanisms—similar, in a way, to how nearly all Western music can be described with notes on a staff using the same system.” Read more.
