Andyshea Afyouni - UCI Medical Student Speaks on Seeking Discomfort, Why Happiness Falls to the Lowest Common Denominator and Starting a Video Diary (#011‪)‬ How to Get Into Medical School: Pass the Mike

Hey there friends! This is Michael Le. Thanks for tuning into another episode of Pass the Mike where I have the pleasure of sharing the narratives of imminent or current medical professionals. In short, my job is to build you a community of mentors from the folks that have come before you. I couldn't be more happy to kick this podcast off today with my good, no, great, friend, Andrew Shea Afyouni. That's A-N-D-R-E-W S-H-E-A A-F-Y-O-U-N-I. He has a VERY impressive list of accomplishments, so please bare with me as I do my due diligence in celebrating his work thus far.

Andrew graduated Summa Cum Laude—that's the highest designated Latin Honors reserved only for those in the top 5 percent of College graduates—with a degree in Neuroscience and a minor in Biomedical Research Minor. Because of our overlaps in graduation year, Major and Minor, I have been fortunate enough to spend much time alongside Andyshea.

While the Bruin family will be sad to lose a brother, Andy won't be far. He is attending UC Irvine's School of Medicine in August 2020. He was admitted last year and decided to take a research year to spend some much needed time with his family before diving headfirst into medical school curricula. In that year, he works in the Endourology Research Team, working with physicians to facilitate clinical studies in the OR and translate his findings to the basic science laboratory. This past November, he traveled to Abu Dhabi to present his work on US-guided Renal Mass Biopsies, Laser Stone Lithotripsy and Endockscopes at the 38th World Congress of Endourology.

UCI has been his home for years now—not only is his family nearby, but he has many old ties with the school of medicine. He participated in the UCI Summer Surgery Program as part of the UCI Department of Urology in 2012 and conducted over 500 hours of research in high school studying autonomic cardiovascular physiology, regulation and higher level neural processing in various animal models. If many of those words don't make sense to you, don't worry, I feel exactly the same way.

And that's just in high school. When Andyshea got to UCLA, he took off running. He continued his work on autonomic cardiovascular regulation in the department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, where his work was published in the American Journal of Physiology. He then transferred his expertise to the field of Neurobiology, writing a thesis examining the role Smad1 plays in the differentiation of dorsal spinal sensory interneurons from mouse embryonic stem cells.

You may get the idea that Andyshea is a one-trick research pony, but that can't be farther from the truth. I don't know many people as generous and giving as the guy and that's exemplified by his volunteer work. He's served as the external vice president of the Saving Hearts foundation, whose mission is to prevent Sudden Cardiac Arrest through awareness, education and action. The foundation provides free preventative heart screenings to young competitive athletes to test for warning signs of Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA). In addition, Andy served as a Database intern for the Mobile Clinic Project,a student-run, nonprofit street-side clinic based in UCLA. He was responsible for chronicling and organizing medical and social records of clients that the Mobile Clinic Project interacts with and serves.

You can find Andy if you want to say hello, ask a question or wonder how in the world he does everything via e-mail at andyafyouni@gmail.com, that's A-N-D-Y-A-F-Y-O-U-N-I-AT-G-M-A-I-L-DOT-C-O-M. Clearly, you can tell he's a busy guy so I'm personally grateful to carve out some time to have a nice conversation with him today. Andyshea, welcome to the show.