Surgery to repair an anterior cruciate ligament one week before he started medical school led Anuj Mehta, CST ’17, to become fascinated with orthopedic surgery. Now, as an orthopedic surgery resident at Temple University Hospital, Mehta is devoted to helping people struggling with acute injuries get back to the same or better level than they were before.
Photo by Joseph V. Labolito
I really enjoyed my time at Temple, and Temple really provided me with the opportunity to become the person I am today in my career.”
Mehta was born in the Indian state of Gujarat. At the age of 10, his parents moved with him and his older brother Abhishek to Allentown, Pennsylvania. Mehta ultimately decided to attend Temple in the footsteps of his brother, who earned a bachelor of science in biology from Temple in 2014. “I loved the city environment and the in-state tuition was attractive,” said Mehta.
Admittedly “a very average student,” he was initially undecided about a major. But he quickly discovered that he loved his science classes and made the choice to major in biology. He was eventually accepted into the Temple Honors Program and even earned a Diamond Peer Teaching Award for helping teach younger students in one of Temple’s notoriously difficult organic chemistry courses.
In his second semester, Mehta became an undergraduate research assistant who served as a project liaison between two research labs—one led by Darius Balciunas, associate professor of biology, the other by Madesh Muniswamy, professor of medical genetics and molecular biochemistry in the Department of Translational Medicine at Temple’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine. The focus: using CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology on zebrafish to study tissue regeneration capabilities.
“I thought the research was magical and it was paramount in me going to medical school,” said Mehta.
While at Temple, Mehta also trained to be a volunteer Temple emergency medicine technician. When a hospital patient’s heart stopped beating one day, Mehta immediately began CPR, which, in combination with the use of an automatic external defibrillator, saved the patient’s life. “It was scary, but at the same time it was an incredible feeling knowing that, in any setting, you can help someone,” he recalled.
Looking back on his time as an undergraduate at Temple, Mehta attributes his success to an easily accessible community of like-minded peers.
“Studying in Philadelphia really geared me up towards a career in medicine,” he said. “I was able to connect with pre-med students at other schools and got exposure to different healthcare systems, including Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).”
While at Temple, Mehta helped found Phi Delta Epsilon Medical Fraternity in 2014 along with Riya Kulkarni, CST ’17, now a pediatrics resident in Phoenix who recently became his fiancé.
School: College of Science and Technology
Degree: BS, biology, 2017
Industry: Medicine
Hometowns: Bhavnagar, India, and Allentown, Pennsylvania
Anuj worked as a wedding/event coordinator in Philadelphia to help pay for his education, where he “learned how to deal with different personalities and keep calm under all situations.”
For two years, the basketball junkie was an undergraduate manager for the Temple men’s basketball team. As an orthopedic resident, he looks forward to working with the team again.
At the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Mehta was the president, founder and editor of the Penn State Journal of Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal for Penn State medical students. He also served as president of the school’s American Medical Student Association and Business of Medicine Association.
Returning to the Temple Health in mid-2021 for his five-year orthopedic surgery residency was a no-brainer. “I wanted to come back to help treat people who really need it,” he explained. “Temple does a good job treating every single patient the same way, regardless of their resources or healthcare options.”
