UConn’s MD/PhD program provides students with an intellectually stimulating and highly integrated educational experience leading to completion of both the MD and PhD degrees. With many alumni matched to highly competitive residencies, the UConn MD/PhD program prepares its graduates for successful careers in both medicine and science.
Mission
The mission of our MD/PhD program is to prepare individuals of outstanding potential for productive careers as physician-scientists. The program emphasizes the development of skills necessary to become a highly competent and caring physician and to perform, evaluate, and communicate the results of independent research in the biomedical sciences.
Furthermore, we strongly believe in the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in science and medicine. Essential to this is our giving opportunities for students of all backgrounds including underrepresented minority groups, disadvantaged backgrounds, and those with disabilities. We are committed to provide individualized support for students from underrepresented or underprivileged backgrounds.
Our program is dedicated to high quality medical and graduate education tailored to the needs of the individual student. We are a close-knit community of students, faculty, and staff. Collegiality and mentorship are key aspects of the program.
Program Structure
MD/PhD students matriculate for the first 18 months with the regular MD students before they pursue their graduate studies, taking four years to complete their PhD, and then return for clinical clerkships. During the first two years, in addition to completing the preclinical requirements of the medical school curriculum, students pursue select graduate school coursework and two to three laboratory rotations. Incoming MD/PhD students have the option to complete their first laboratory rotation the summer before matriculation.
There is an emphasis in continuity of clinical education, providing opportunity to practice clinical skills on patients from the start of medical school and throughout the graduate phase, better preparing students to excel in clinical rotations. Students remain actively involved in the program during all phases of their training via weekly research club, symposiums, leadership opportunities, and other events.
As part of the longitudinal clinical experience, students are required to continue clinical activities in community service clinics or in specialty clinics for a half day per month during the graduate phase in order to maintain their clinical skills. Following successful completion of requirements for the Ph.D. degree, students return to medical school to complete two years of clinical training.
For a full breakdown of program structure, see our page on the M Delta Curriculum for MD/PhD Students.
Medical Education
UConn School of Medicine is one of the nation's leading public medical schools, featuring a modern, case-based learning curriculum, early clinical experience, and state-of-the-art facilities for clinical simulation, virtual and cadaverial anatomy education
MD/PhD students engage in UConn School of Medicine's industry-leading M Delta curriculum.
Learn more about UConn School of Medicine's Curriculum.
Graduate Education
During the graduate phase, students pursue intensive thesis research in one of seven areas of concentration (AOC) in biomedical science and complete additional coursework required by their AOC. The Biomedical Science AOCs are:
| Cell Biology | Neuroscience |
| Genetics & Developmental Biology | Skeletal Biology and Regeneration |
| Immunology | Systems Biology |
| Molecular Biology and Biochemistry |
The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine
The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) offers collaborative research training opportunities for our students in mammalian genetics and genomic medicine on our UConn Health campus. Our students have the option to complete lab rotations and perform their Ph.D. thesis research with a JAX faculty member at the Jackson Laboratory on our Farmington, CT campus at UConn Health, if the JAX faculty member has an appointment as a faculty member of the UConn Graduate School. Learn more about the cooperative PhD program and JAX-GM.
Facilities
Students
MD/PhD Candidate Anthony "Tony" Pettinato in the Hinson lab at Jax-GM.
Check our our Instagram!
Congrats to Drs. Ladha and Pettinato on defending your theses this past month! We wish you the best of luck as you move on to M3! 🩺
#mdphd #thesis #science #medicine #jax #uconn #health #dualdegree
A HUGE CONGRATS to @prof_peej on publicly defending his dissertation, "The Aging Microbiome: Metagenomic Characterization Identifies Potential Pathogenicity Risk Factors and Therapeutic Approaches” 🎉🎉
It was a pleasure to listen to you talk about your passion for microbiology, pathogens, aging, and genetic engineering!
Swipe thru for celebratory pics with a modern dinosaur ➡️➡️➡️
#mdphd #thesis #research #biology #medicine #science #md #phd #gradschool #medicine #uconn #health
Happy holidays, from our homes to yours! UConn MD/PhD students are taking a well deserved winter break and finding safe and relaxing ways to recharge, from baking to dressing up our pets.
#md #phd #mdphd #mstp #doctor #futuredoctor #science #medicine #holidays #celebrate #warmandcozy #petstagram #petsofinstagram
Meet our M1’s:
Mian Horvath!
🧬 What excites you the most about starting an MD/PhD program?
I am most excited about the actual starting - to learn how to be a doctor 👩🏻⚕️, to learn science 🧫 , and to get to know everyone. Right now, there's a feeling you get when you've worked so hard for so long to reach this point!
🔬 What drew you to our MD/PhD program?
When I interviewed, I really liked the atmosphere and camaraderie. We are going to be here for a really time, so I wanted an actual community, which I felt like I get from UConn!
🌞 What's a fun fact/hobby about you?
During quarantine, I started making sourdough bread! I'm currently working on a roasted garlic and rosemary loaf. 🍞
We would like to congratulate MD/PhD candidates Anthony “Tony” Pettinato, Feria Ladha @ferialadha, and Rachel Cohn @rcohn435 for their publication in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation. As members of the Hinson laboratory at Jax, students Pettinato, Ladha, and Cohn leverage powerful genetic research techniques to study cardiac dysfunction. Their paper “Development of a Cardiac Sarcomere Functional Genomics Platform to Enable Scalable Interrogation of Human TNNT2 Variants” provides a better understanding of how mutations in cardiac muscle proteins can lead to heart disease and failure. Get more information from the link in our bio!
Meet our M1’s: Chris Pathoulas!
👨⚕️ What excites you the most about starting an MD/PhD program?
I'm excited to start learning clinical skills and being able to apply the knowledge to help patients. Working with patient instructors and faculty here at UConn will be a great asset to help me gain confidence in my abilities, which I can apply to my CLIC site when I work with patients and listen to their stories. I'm also excited to meet and get to know my classmates! 📚
🩺 What drew you to our MD/PhD program?
Meeting people on my interview day! Every student and faculty I met was so nice and interested in what I was doing. It's a very supportive environment, with a strong sense of community that I wanted to be a part of. The students work together to achieve a common goal, which I think is more relatable to what a doctor's role will be on a care team.
💫 What's a fun fact about you?
I had my appendix removed when I was a senior in high school. A joke is that my brothers and I tell is that, although we are triplets, I don't have the same number of organs as them, and that’s how you can tell me apart!🧍♂️🧍♂️🧍♂️
Today at our weekly MD/PhD research club, we had a series of 5-minute flash talks from 3rd year students on the subject of their summer lab rotation research. 3rd year student @jinh___d took the the time to sketch out quick cartoons of the projects during the presentations! Can you guess what the subjects were?
Meet our M1’s: Joe Pathoulas!
🧬 What excites you the most about starting an MD/PhD program? 👨⚕️
I'm excited to meet my colleagues, new people who share the same passion for medicine and science that I have. I'm excited to get different peoples' perspectives and gain the knowledge that I need to advance the field of health care.
🔬 What drew you to our MD/PhD program?
When I interviewed here, everyone was so nice. The people were fantastic, and everyone seemed to be enjoying their time here! Also, the culture around the school is very team-based, where everyone wants each other to succeed.
🍁 What's a fun fact/hobby about you?
My family loves to make maple syrup, and we also have a secret family barbecue sauce 🍖 that goes back four generations!
Next up... Titas Grabauskas!
👨🏫 What excites you the most about starting an MD/PhD program?
Everything! From meeting new people, all the way to challenging yourself in a new way. Also, all the knowledge that comes with this training - I'm really excited to apply this knowledge to do high quality research.
🩺 What drew you to our MD/PhD program?
I have 2 big reasons: The MDelta curriculum, with TBL (team-based learning), is very unique and novel way of studying for me; second of all, I did a 10-week summer research internship here, and had a little glimpse of what the caliber of research 🧪 is being done here. Even back then, I had a really good impression of UConn, and was excited at the prospect of attending this school!
What's a fun fact/hobby?
I love the water 🌊 - I swam in college, and I have been surfing 🏄 for the past two years, while living in San Diego. I'm planning on continuing to catch waves here - Rhode Island is very close, and can easily be made into a day trip! ☀️
#md #phd #mdphd #science #research #medicine #medschool #med #uconn #uconnnation #ct #connecticut #surfer #physician #physicianscientist
Get to know our M1’s:
Justin King!
👨⚕️ What excites you the most about starting an MD/PhD program?
I'm excited to start hands-on learning with patients, and to start a PhD thesis to have my own project to focus on. I'm excited to progress my career, and be around colleagues and friends that are working towards the same goal of becoming a physician-scientist.
🧬 What drew you to our MD/PhD program?
I'm passionate about genetics, so a lot of the professors at the Jackson Labs @jaxlab aligned with my research interests - a lot of high profile researchers doing intense research to take my project to the next level. Location was really important - I knew I wanted to be in the Northeast; and I'm halfway between Maine where my girlfriend lives and am very close to NYC where my brother is at.
💬 What's a fun fact/hobby about you?
I completed my undergrad in Canada! For fun, I like to ski 🎿 and trail run (or getting outside in other ways, such as hiking 🥾 ), which makes Farmington, CT an ideal location to live and attend medical school 🏥.
Today marks the end of the first week of school for our M1’s! To kick off the new school year, we will be introducing our new first years over the next month! 🎉
Introducing... Caroline Guild!
🩺 What excites you the most about starting an MD/PhD program?
I'm very excited about anatomy - we just had our first class, and I thought that this is exactly what I want to be learning. A little scared, but very excited!
Also, I don't have any doctors in my family, and I wasn't sure if medical school would be how I imagined, but so far it's exceeded my expectations. The professors' commitment to teach us this material is so impressive- you can see that they really love it.
Finally, I'm really grateful that I'll have 3-4 years to dig into a very specific project - to have the opportunity, time, and training. I would never miss the med school curriculum for anything, and I'm glad I'll also have those years to dig into something. 🧬
🔬 What drew you to our MD/PhD program?
The people! I can see myself being lifelong friends with these people, and having meaningful conversations. During the interview process, this was the only place that arranged for us to sit down and have lunch with a large group of students only. I didn't feel like they were selling the program, because they didn't need to!
💙 What's a fun fact/hobby about you?
I'm getting really interested in maps - I like to bike 🚴♀️, and using maps 🗺, I like trying to orient myself, and figure out where is safe to bike, and what the elevation is like. Recently I've discovered open street maps, and open cycle maps, that are crowdsourced and pretty detailed.
#uconn #mdphd #md #phd #doubledoc #medicine #science #biomedicalscience #research #futuredoctor #med #premed #lab #lablife #ct #firstyear #M1
We are thrilled to welcome the new UConn MD/PhD Class of 2028! We look forward to seeing you learn, grow, and thrive here in your new home for the next 8 years. We will do our best to help your achieve your dreams of treating patients and curing diseases!
.
.
.
#whitecoatceremony #mdphd #md #phd #doubledocs #physician #scientist #uconn #ct
Check out our new blog post on MD/PhD candidate Bruce Rheaume’s recent publication in the scientific journal Nature Communications, “Single cell transcriptome profiling of retinal ganglion cells identifies cellular subtypes.” This work serves as a basis for better understanding cellular diversity in the central nervous system while also pointing to new targets for regenerative therapies. Link in bio!
.
.
.
#uconn #uconnhealth #mdphd #md #phd #student #gradschool #medschool #medicine #research #science #spinalcordinjury #regenerativemedicine #published
Here’s a view into a few of our work and study spaces during the past few months! Whether studying for the Step 1 medical boards during a pandemic, or adapting our lab life for the home office, UConn MD/PhDs have been hard at work while sheltering in place.
.
.
.
#uconn #mdphd #wfh #wfhlife #medicine #science #studyspace #homeoffice #step1 #labrat
Today, grad-phase MD/PhD students got fit-tested for N95 masks, in preparation for their re-entry into clinic! Here at UConn, students go to a CLiC (Clinical Longitudinal immersion in the Community) site starting the first week of medical school. During the grad phase, students continue to go to their clinical sites to learn from their preceptors and maintain their clinical skills.
.
.
#mdphd #doubledocs #uconn #medicine #science
Meet some of the fluffy members of our MD/PhD family, who have been keeping us company, and sane, during quarantine!
.
.
#uconn #uconnhealth #dogsofinstagram #catsofinstagram #petlife #mdphd
We would like to congratulate our very own Jennifer Chung for winning a prestigious F30 award funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for her project, “Uncovering interactions of the gut microbiome with the immune system in the context of immune checkpoint inhibitors”. Jenn is currently a 6th year MD/PhD student in Dr. George Weinstock’s lab. Read more about her work and interests in the blog post, linked in our bio! #mdphd #uconn #uconnhealth #medicine
Congrats to Dr. Grace Kwon @kwongrace on successfully defending your thesis, “Investigating the function of highly expressed long noncoding RNA in bronchial epithelium”, this past spring! We are so excited for you as you start your medical clerkships and enter the last phase of your training here at UConn! #uconnhealth #mdphd
Congrats to Dr. Michael Chung @mschung1992 on a successful thesis defense this past spring! We wish you the best of luck as you re-enter your medical school training! #mdphd #uconnhealth #doubledoctor
As summer rolls in, MD/PhD students are taking time for themselves while socially distancing. Annie Yao (G1) stands at the peak of Cascade Mountain next to Lake Placid, NY.
