Student Profiles: Eugene Ateh

Eugene Ateh

Eugene had a successful career as a veterinarian in Cameroon, but he left Africa to pursue an education in the United States that he hopes will make him better able to assist his animal patients – and their owners.

"I used to work with a US program studying disease in livestock," he explains. "We realized that diseases were being passed from people to animals, and I thought that training in human and animal medicine would help me learn about disease progression and prevention, knowledge that I could take back to the farmers in my country to help combat disease in the human and animal populations."

Eugene is a post-baccalaureate categorical student in microbiology at the DMRT program. The categorical certification at the University of Maryland School of Medicine is a one-year accelerated program for individuals who already possess a Bachelor’s of Science degree in a basic science area such as chemistry or biology. Like many others in the program, he hopes to further his education and improve his employment options. "I’d like to go on to the Masters in Public Health program here before going back to my country," he says. "I know that my DMRT education will prove very useful in my success."

There is little about his training with DMRT that Eugene has not found useful. "I have been surprised by how easily this program relates to the present global condition," he explains. "We are studying things in the laboratory – like the recent E coli outbreaks; we had the opportunity to study that firsthand in the lab as it was happening. The program has many practical applications like that. The laboratory part of it is probably the most relevant, because it provides hands-on experience, as well as marketable skills. I would recommend this program for people interested in human medicine, as well as veterinary medicine. It teaches the diagnosis of disease as well as the laboratory tests that support those diagnoses. The skills I have acquired at DMRT are transferrable, so they can be applied in a variety of settings."