Incoming VP&S Student Already Making (Brain) Waves

Incoming VP&S student Haroon Arain credits NYP and Columbia pre-college programs for launching him toward a career in medicine, and for the past six months he’s “paid it forward” by teaching neuroscience to local students through a new program called CU-HERE.

Arain was 10 years old when he moved with his family to Washington Heights from Karachi, Pakistan. A year later, he enrolled in NewYork-Presbyterian’s Lang Youth Medical Program, a six-year science enrichment program for students living in Washington Heights and Inwood. Later, as a junior at Columbia Secondary School, Arain enrolled in the Zuckerman Institute’s Brain Research Apprenticeships in New York at Columbia (BRAINYAC) program, where he began a five-year schizophrenia research apprenticeship in the Gogos and Losonczy labs.

“I credit the Lang program with instilling confidence early on that I wanted to pursue a career in medicine, but more importantly, seriously inspiring me to treasure science as the most fascinating outlet to translate the world around me,” says Arain. BRAINYAC was another life-changing experience, allowing Arain to explore the neuroscience of schizophrenia, a disease that holds deep importance in his personal life.

“Furthermore, as an immigrant, my intellectual curiosities gravitate to pondering how neuroscience can provide mechanistic explanations for the psychobiological mysteries of our rich inner worlds, namely how individuals across cultures viscerally feel the world differently,” he says.

After graduating from Columbia College in 2024, Arain started working as a teacher and mentor for CU-HERE (Columbia University Health Sciences Exploration and Research Experience), a pre-college enrichment program for local high-school students directed by breast surgeon Lisa Wiechmann. Arain most recently created and taught a six-session neuroscience and behavior course to 36 students.

Wiechmann is delighted by what she has observed in Arain and his neuroscience students: “This pilot program attracted high school students from a variety of public, private, and parochial schools to the medical center to discover and explore neuroscience. Haroon brings great enthusiasm and intelligence to his subject. And he has a wonderful way with students.”

Arain plans to remain actively involved with CU-HERE during medical school. “VP&S’s rich community programming is part of what made it my top-choice medical school, as I felt my ambitions for teaching would be supported here unlike anywhere else,” he says. “My next immediate goal is to teach students the role of neuroscience as a window into human behavior and psychiatric health disparities for individuals from vulnerable socioeconomic backgrounds.”

Looking further ahead, Arain is considering a career in neurosurgery or psychiatry, with particular interest in functional and psychiatric neurosurgery. Regardless of specialty, however, he is committed to working with underserved populations and integrating community-focused care into his medical career.