Timofey Karginov

UConn School of Medicine, School of Biomedical Sciences, Class of 2025

I was born in Moscow, Russia, grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  I obtained my B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2017.

My primary healthcare experience comes from volunteering and shadowing physicians at the University of Chicago Medical Center. There, many of the patients come from the nearby South Side neighborhoods, an underserved region that has received little attention and care from the city. As a first-year, I volunteered for a study sponsored by the Hospitalist Project helping to research and improve upon the quality of care patients received at UChicago. During my junior year, I shadowed a primary care physician and social worker through the UChicago Comprehensive Care Program (CCP) and worked as an Emergency Room Volunteer, where I worked to improve patients’ stays and attempted to emulate the culturally-conscious and inviting demeanors I observed among the doctors.

I chose the dual degree track at UConn to tackle challenges at and beyond the bench. I believe that a holistic understanding, one encompassing everything from molecular mechanisms of disease and computational tools to the communicative relationship between doctors and patients, is invaluable to addressing today’s healthcare disparities. Urban Service Track students embody this flexible approach knowledge with their training in languages, policy, advocacy, leadership, and teamwork as these competencies relate to healthcare. Fostering these competencies will help me understand the health challenges my surrounding communities face and show me ways to help overcome these challenges through an understanding of both medicine and cultural and economic differences. I applied the UST to move beyond patient treatment in an academic center and to make a greater impact in my community.