Marek Svoboda

I originally come from Slušovice where I grew up and attended elementary school until the age of nine, when I transferred to a language school and then to a gymnasium in nearby Zlín. When I was fourteen, I was accepted to the newly opened Open Gate boarding school in Babice near Prague, where I could study thanks to a scholarship from The Kellner Family Foundation (formerly Educa Foundation). Not only did this experience help me build my independence, but I was also able to develop my intention to study abroad, while pursuing academic debating and other activities. Before my senior year, I had the opportunity to spend three weeks at a prestigious academic summer program for high school students at Columbia University in the city of New York, where I immediately fell in love with the Core Curriculum, consisting of subjects such as literature, philosophy, and history of art. As a future physician, I consider the humanities to be an important component of my education, which should include the knowledge of all aspects of the human condition. Therefore, I chose Columbia University for my undergraduate studies of Behavioral Neuroscience, during which I worked as a Research Assistant in a Cognitive Neuroscience lab and also as a Neurosurgery Intern at the prestigious hospital Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on Manhattan. Additionally, I spent one semester in France, studying philosophy at Sorbonne in Paris. During my undergraduate studies, I was again fully supported by the Kellner Family Foundation, who also later agreed to partially finance my medical studies. After obtaining my B.A (Bachelor of Arts) from Columbia College, for one year, I worked as a Laboratory Technician at Columbia University Medical Center in the laboratory of Dr. Hynek Wichterle, who focuses on research of neural stem cell differentiation. In the fall of 2015, I commenced my MD-PhD studies (an eight-year combined degree in medicine and biomedical research) at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, with generous support of Bakala Foundation. I have now finished the first two years of medical school and passed the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Exam) STEP 1. Currently, I am a PhD student at Dartmouth, conducting research in genetics and single cell RNA sequencing data analysis.