Introducing your judges!

Dr. RAD

Retrieved from: wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod

Richard Albistegui-DuBois (known to his students as Dr. RAD) was born in Topeka, Kansas. A strange obsession with cephalopods led him to earn a bachelor's degree in marine biology from UC Santa Cruz in 1996. However, by that point his interests had shifted to human brain imaging, so he moved to Los Angeles, earning a Ph.D. in neuroscience in 2004. 

While in graduate school, Dr. RAD discovered a passion for teaching, which he pursued (teaching anatomy and physiology classes at Mt. St. Mary's College) while simultaneously completing postdoctoral work. Finally, in 2006, he accepted a full-time position as a professor of anatomy and physiology at Palomar College in San Marcos.

He estimates that, at his current average southward migration speed, he should reach the South Pole in about the year 2300.

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Parag Chowdhury, PhD


Parag grew up in Little Rock, AR where he attended the historic Little Rock Central High School.  During his 11th grade year he became very interested in epilepsy and he began working in a pharmacology lab.  For his work on epilepsy, he received several awards from the US Navy and the American Chemical Society.  Following high school, he attended a small liberal arts school called Hendrix College where he majored in Philosophy and began studying Cell Biology and the Neurosciences.  Following college, he worked in a neuroscience lab where he studied visual image formation and auditory processing in the brain.  He soon entered into a doctoral program in Physiology and Biophysics at the University of AR for Medical Science.  He completed his doctoral work in 2004. It focused on visualizing changes in cellular architecture of migrating cancer cells.  As a researcher, his primary expertise is in cellular trafficking utilizing confocal real time imaging (i.e. watching cells crawl around on dishes with big microscopes).  After a brief detour to Austin, Texas he moved to San Diego to do a post-doctoral appointment at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in Structural Biology.  His projects there involved visualization of synaptic vesicle components by cryo-electron microscopy, studying the sub-cellular architecture of brain cells (neurons); bigger microscopes to look at smaller things.

Parag has a deep love of Nature and social/environmental justice issues.  He and his wife Julia love watching documentaries and spending weekends dragging their cameras out to the beach or to one of California's epic Parks.

In today’s world, we are increasingly surrounded by the language of Biology.  From the human genome project to stem cells: we are faced with questions that impact not only our self identity but our identity as a species. “What is life; how has life evolved on this planet and how do we study this process?” To address these questions, in fact, to participate in the dialogue, we must be conversant in the language of Biology. As a teacher at High Tech High I hope to impart this biological grammar and literacy to my students so that they can make informed decisions and choices as citizens, and have a say in our collective future.

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Monique Mahlum, MD

I am 31 years old and a native of North County San Diego.  Graduated from Torrey Pines High School and then went to J)... This is classic for Tuberculosis and I admitted a woman with this exact constellation of symptoms a few months ago!  And of course, you do get to save lives using your understanding of the human body and disease. Pretty awesome.   

UC Berkeley for my undergraduate degree in Art Practice. That’s right, I was an art major, as in oil painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking.  I always knew I wanted to go to medical school and did my pre-medical classes during my time at Berkeley.  You CAN go to medical school with a degree other than biology or chemistry and in fact I think it puts you at an advantage, making you a well-rounded human and setting you apart from the thousands of applicants per year.  In any case, it was a great choice for me.  I graduated, came back to San Diego and got a job as a clinical research assistant in BioEthics for a psychiatrist at UCSD for the next three years.  I then went to medical school at UC Davis and fell in love with internal medicine.  Like the show House, we get to play detective to think about all the possible diagnoses when a patient presents to the hospital with vague, interesting, and sometimes life-threatening symptoms.  So I am now a second year resident in Internal Medicine at UCSD.  Additionally, I am a mother of an amazing and energetic 2-year-old boy named Rune and the wife to a lovely man named Dan.  I work hard and I work many many hours but I love my job.  I couldn’t have asked for a better career.  I can’t tell you how cool it is when a patient comes in to the hospital with the exact symptoms and signs on exam that you read about in the textbook!  For example, weight loss, fevers, night sweats, travel to Mexico and hemoptysis (google it, it’s a medical term

I am looking forward to seeing all your presentations.  I encourage everyone to think about medicine as a career. If you have any questions about life in medical school or as a resident, I am here to help!