Lorenzo Sewanan

Lorenzo Rakesh Sewanan (Renz) was born to Guyanese parents in Suriname, a small Caribbean country. At the age of 16, he and part of his family moved to Jamaica, Queens, New York, where he attended the local public high school Hillcrest for his junior and senior years. Due to a fortunate series of circumstances, he was awarded a Questbridge National Questbridge National Match Scholarship to Trinity College, a small liberal arts institution in Hartford, Connecticut, and was the first person in his family to finish high school and to attend college.
At Trinity College, he majored in Physics and in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Writing and Rhetoric and completing premedical courses, in addition to studying abroad in Asia and Australia. While at Trinity, he was involved in a variety of activities from teaching, mentoring, literacy outreach, and science outreach. While an underg-raduate, he conducted research on the neuroethology of the weakly electric fish Apteronotus leptorhynchus, computational modeling to understand cardiac contractile function, and spent two summers studying intervertebral disc degeneration at the Feinstein Institute and was there exposed to the concept of the physician-scientist. Currently, he is a seventh year MD/PhD student, completing his thesis research on cardiac biomechanics, tissue engineering, and human cardiomyopathy in the lab of Stuart G. Campbell in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He plans to specialize in cardiovascular medicine and pursue a career as physician-scientist. His leisure time activities include happy hours, cooking, gaming, writing, and reading.