Meet 2024 Award Recipient
Carina Pek Jean Seah
Carina Seah came to the MD PhD program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2019 from the University of Southern California, where she concurrently earned her Bachelor’s degree in Human Biology and Master’s degree in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.
At Icahn Mount Sinai, Carina completed her PhD in the department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences under the mentorship of Laura Huckins and Kristen Brennand. Here, she has co-authored 14 publications, 8 as first- or co-first author, presented 6 oral presentations and 2 poster presentations at international conferences, was awarded an F30 grant by the National Institute for Mental Health, and was awarded an Early Career Investigator award by the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics. She serves as a voting member of the MSTP admissions committee and as a teaching assistant for the MD PhD biomedical sciences course.
Carina is passionate about ensuring equity throughout science and medicine, and was awarded the Anti-Racism Fellowship by Icahn Mount Sinai in 2022 and 2023 to develop a curriculum to mitigate biological essentialism– the conflation of immutable biological factors with social factors such as race, gender, and ability. The curriculum was taught to over 100+ learners across 5 institutions. She has also served on an institution-wide committee assessing the use of race in clinical algorithms, after advocating for the elimination of a ‘race-correction’ factor in an algorithm for kidney function.
Carina would like to thank her mentors, family, and friends, who have always celebrated curiosity, passion, and service. She thanks you for always centering a desire for positive change as a uniting value, and for enriching every aspect of her life.
Carina will complete her MD PhD training in 2026. She hopes to continue to work to decipher how our individual genetics and environmental exposures molecularly contribute to brain disorders, with the ultimate goal of developing medically actionable interventions for all people.