TAMPA, Fla. — Saturday marked a big day for students at the University of South Florida. Graduates started a new chapter after getting their degrees during USF’s summer commencement.
Among the grads was Youssef Mohamed.
“It definitely wasn’t easy,” said Mohamed.
At 23 years old, Mohamed walked across the stage with his Doctorate in Biomedical Engineering.
“I want to work in the medical field treating patients face-to-face, but I want to also be able to use that engineering background and kind of help improve healthcare delivery,” said Mohamed.
Mohamed is originally from Egypt; he immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was about seven years old.
Getting to this moment has been no small feat. During his final year of the program, Mohamed said he was completing his first year of medical school at the same time.
“One day, I got a call saying that I got accepted into medical school, but I still had a year left for my Ph.D. program because of COVID-19,” said Mohamed. “That put a little gap, a little delay in my progress, so I knew I didn’t want to let up that opportunity, so I said, I’ll just dive in, and I’ll kind of figure it out as I go.”
But he’s used to setting the bar high: in 2017, at 18 years old, Mohamed became USF’s youngest grad, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Sciences.
He explained that support and time management are the biggest things that helped him accomplish his goals, pointing to his family and mentors that were there for him along the way.
Mohamed said his goal is to be a physician-scientist.
“It feels great to finally have achieved the Ph.D. and have something that represents the past five years of the work that I’ve been doing in the lab, but just going to keep going, one more degree, and then it’ll be in the workforce actively giving back, which is the ultimate goal,” said Mohamed.
USF said it would award more than 2,700 degrees during summer commencement.
