Profiles of exceptional Miller School students

Miller School students aren’t typically invited to prestigious European medical conferences to discuss self-authored research papers. But little about Mohamed Kaif, B.S. ’06, is typical.

Currently in his last year of medical school, Kaif flew to Prague, Czech Republic, in October to attend the Eighth International Congress on Coronary Artery Disease. Kaif was
accorded the honor of presenting a paper he’d written about links between stroke and heart failure. The treatise was created using statistics accumulated by Kathy A. Hebert, M.D., a Miller School associate professor of cardiovascular medicine. Kaif did most of the writing.

“Dr. Hebert had data about the prevalence of stroke in heart failure patients living in
Louisiana and Miami,” Kaif says. “Plus, she was involved in the same kind of research in
the country of Georgia. So we took all this data and tried to see how prevalent stroke was in the heart-failure population.

“The results were interesting, in that the prevalence in Georgia was low, while it was
higher in Miami and Louisiana, which were very comparable,” adds Kaif, who’s looking to pursue externships in internal medicine and cardiology. “And it didn’t really seem to vary based on race, ethnicity, and gender. We’re not sure why it’s so low in Georgia.”

Being analytical and inquisitive comes naturally to Kaif, who was born in Bangalore,
India, and migrated to New Jersey with his family at the age of 1. Eight years later the Kaif family moved to Tarpon Springs, Florida, where Kaif attended high school.

There was never any doubt in his mind about becoming a physician, given that his mom
is a geriatrician who has two brothers who are doctors. As if additional reinforcement was needed, practically every time Kaif’s maternal grandmother saw him, she’d make it a point to mention: “You ought to be a doctor!”

A participant in the six-year Baby Doc program, Kaif earned a B.S. in biology from the
University of Miami in 2006. “It’s been quite a ride, it’s been great,” he says of attending the Miller School. “Especially the clinical years.”

Kaif is particularly grateful to the MillerSchool alumni whose generous contributions to
a school fund enabled him to defray $10,000 a year from his medical school expenses.

“That really helped,” Kaif says of the financial aid. “Having this kind of assistance means
a lot. It kind of frees you when making specialty choices that determine how you practice
medicine for the rest of your life.”