Faculty Focus: Rahul Rastogi, MBBS
What is your hometown?
Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
How/when did you become interested in science and/or medicine?
I belong to a family of scientists but none of them were in medicine. So, one wish my father and grandparents had were that I would become involved in medicine. But more than that, I was very impressed by my family physician when I was a child and the way that he could administer care elegantly and without creating fear. I was always interested in science but as I grew older it became more and more obvious that medicine was a career path I should take.
When did you join the University of Iowa faculty?
Late 2014
How or why did you choose to join the faculty at the University of Iowa?
Family decisions, my wife graduating, and we wanted to keep the family together and both of us were interested in academics and Iowa gave us that opportunity to be together and offered the possibility for growth in our careers.
Is there a teacher or mentor who helped shape your career?
I have several mentors during my lifetime. But I think the most influential person had to be my high school biology teacher because my mind was just forming, and he made that subject very interesting to me and paved the path for me to walk on to be here. Also, my childhood physician. I was always interested in pain, but pain didn’t really come to the forefront of medicine until around 1994.
How do you see your faculty role impacting medicine and/or science?
I see my role as a faculty member the biggest drive for me to remain in academics. I believe the day we reach our pinnacle we are done. In medicine we only know about 5 – 10 % of the body. It is my opportunity to choose the right people who are passionate about the subject and will continue to grow the subject to its full potential. My role is choosing the right faculty and to equip them with all advanced tools and inquisitiveness to look for solutions. I want to understand how I can help the community, not just run a pain clinic.
What are some of your outside interests?
If you don’t get interested in the topic by interesting teachers, then you may take a different path. I finished my MBA in 2017. I went to IE in Madrid, Spain because it is one of the world’s top ten programs. I chose to do the entrepreneurship because I wanted to apply entrepreneurship to medicine. Healthcare is a business and we need to start thinking differently about it. We need to do charity work, but we need to leverage that work into profitable undertakings.