Sat Nov 9, 2024: Courage, Commitment, and Care: Veterans in Medical School and the Legacy of Heroes

Sungjae Park is a 4th year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. After
receiving his nursing degree from Utah State University, he joined the Army in 2013 and served as a 68X (Behavioral Health Specialist) in Hawaii. He cared for service members with emotional and behavioral struggles such as PTSD, depression, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and drug addiction in the inpatient psychiatric ward. This inspired him to become a physician and dedicate his life to serving military veterans and military communities. In 2017, he was separated from the Army as a Sergeant (E5) and moved to New York City to pursue a degree in Human Biology at Hunter College. He graduated with high honors in 2020. He plans on becoming a psychiatrist and working with veteran and military populations.

Michael Lemonick is a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a veteran of the U.S. Navy. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree with distinction in mathematics in 2015 from the United States Naval Academy, where he also played on the varsity soccer team, and he received a master’s degree in international public management in 2017 from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), where he was selected as an Emile Boutmy International Scholar. He served two tours of duty onboard USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) and accumulated more than 25 months at sea in support of diverse national security objectives. During his final two years in the Navy, he was an Naval ROTC instructor at.The Military College of South Carolina-The Citadel. Michael has also completed academic coursework at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences; Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey; and Middlebury College’s Language Schools, where he was selected as a Fellow for Peace. In 2024, Michael was selected as a Pat Tillman Scholar. He intends on pursuing his medical studies with the aim of
becoming a surgeon.

Harry Kim is a former U.S. Army combat medic, who served in a CBRN unit after joining the military in 2015. As an international student from Korea, Harry became a naturalized U.S. citizen while in the Army and was inspired by his early experiences with veteran healthcare at the OKC VA Medical Center. After his service, he pursued medical school, integrating his passion for biopsychosocial care with his military background. Currently, Harry is applying to psychiatry residency, with a focus on serving diverse patient populations and advancing veteran mental health care through research and clinical practice.

Tirone Young is currently pursuing a Doctor of Medicine degree at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, NY. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2016 with a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering and a NCAA Division-I Varsity Letter playing Army Football as a walk-on. He was commissioned into the United States Army, serving primarily as a nuclear engineer and nuclear medical scientist in the Medical Service Corps in Landstuhl, Germany. Additionally, Tirone led in supplementary public health capacities. He worked as a global health proponent to NATO out of Budapest, Hungary and directed the synchronization and analysis of COVID-19 surveillance testing for NATO military forces in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Tirone was honorably discharged from the military in August of 2021.

Mike Auten graduated from West Point in 2016 with majors in Civil Engineering and Russian Studies. On graduation, he cross-commissioned into the U.S. Marine Corps and spent his first year of active duty on a Fulbright U.S. Student grant in Ukraine. After returning from his time abroad, he checked into the The Basic School and was designated a communications strategy and operations officer (4502). He spent most of his active-duty time based out of Camp Lejeune, NC. After a deployment to the Horn of Africa in 2020, Mike submitted his application to the military institutional partnership program at the Icahn School of Medicine, and he started medical school here in fall of 2022. Today, he continues his military service as a U.S. Navy Reserve foreign area officer focused on Europe and Ukraine. In medicine, he plans to pursue residency training in general surgery and build a career at the intersection of emergency health
care and foreign policy.

Noah Silver-Beck is a first year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
He enlisted in the Marine Corps his senior year of high school, and left for boot camp shortly
after graduation. He served for four years as a combat engineer in countries including Japan,
South Korea, Australia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq. Noah was honorably discharged in 2018 with
the rank of sergeant. He moved back home to New York after his discharge and began school at
Rockland Community College. In 2020, Noah transferred to Drexel University, where he
graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biology in 2023. During his gap year, he worked
as a medical scribe at a geriatric primary care clinic in West Philadelphia.

Julia is currently a fourth-year medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She studied Economics and Mathematics at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she was a member of the varsity equestrian team. After graduating, Julia enlisted in the Army as a Combat Medic through the MAVNI program, driven by her desire to serve and her passion for medicine. Stationed at Camp Red Cloud in South Korea in 2014, she earned the Expert Field Medical Badge (EFMB) as an Honor Graduate for achieving the highest score on the written exam. In 2015, she transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where she worked in the Medical Surgical Inpatient Unit for two years, shadowing various physicians and developing a keen interest in radiology. In her final year of service, she was selected as an executive assistant to the Battalion Command Team at the U.S. Army Element – North. After her service, Julia completed her premedical courses through the Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program at Columbia University and matriculated at Icahn School of Medicine in 2020 through the linkage program. She has contributed to research on Hepatocellular Carcinoma since her first year in medical school, honoring her father’s memory, and has mentored pre-med students, helping them gain admission to medical school. Julia remains committed to her goal of becoming a Diagnostic Radiologist.

Michael Winneme Seidu is currently an MS3 at UC Davis School of Medicine. He is from a small town in Ghana called Buipe. He moved to the United States in 2012 after college where he pursued a BSc in Home Sciences (Now called BSc Family and Consumer Sciences) and worked as a Teaching Assistant. He enlisted in the U.S Navy six months after immigrating. Prior to post-bac premed program at Columbia, he worked as a Navy Hospital Corpsman (Medic) where he primarily worked in medical imaging (X-ray/CT/MRI) and also moonlighted part-time at a civilian hospital in South Carolina. He worked full-time at NYU Langone Health as a Cat Scan Technologist and per-diem at an ambulatory Surgical Center as an X-ray Technologist and Radiation Safety Officer for a year after his post-baccalaureate. 
His goal is to become an Orthopedic Surgeon, eventually move back home to help the rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, work towards a better coordinated health effort so that those in need will have access to the best medical services in the world. He is passionate about giving back to his community with an emphasis on service and upliftment of underrepresented and underserved communities to reduce local and global health care disparities.
He is currently on three research projects in the orthopedic department, president of SNMA, Break the Script and Orthopedic Surgery SIG, He is also a Co-D of Imani Student run clinic.
Beyond the classroom, his interests include church, travel, bodybuilding, soccer, sleep and medical tv shows.