April 25, 2022 – Mathew Sebastian, a member of the UF College of Medicine’s MD-PhD Training Program, was honored with two UF Presidential Service Awards at a ceremony earlier this month.

The Presidential Service Award recognizes undergraduate and graduate students from across UF who dedicate themselves to promoting social justice, community awareness and civic engagement on campus and in the community for at least 200 hours. Sebastian also received the Professional Student Outstanding Service Award, which recognizes a UF graduate or professional student who engaged in exemplary service activities or projects outside or inside the classroom.

Sebastian’s service work has included volunteering in the Dominican Republic, the UF Equal Access Clinic Network and with the White Coat Company, a group that holds performances for patients at UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital and Tacachale Center. The fourth-year medical student is also the founding chair of UF’s MD-PhD Scholar Council and a former member of the Student Advocacy Committee at the College of Medicine. During the beginning of the pandemic, he served as a project leader in the UF chapter of the COVID-19 Student Service Corps and co-organized a group of students to assist the emergency department in patient follow-up with cultures and radiologic findings.

“Medicine is service,” Sebastian said. “It’s not something we have to wait to start once we’re established because the College of Medicine gives us multiple opportunities to become involved in volunteer work to serve others.”

Sebastian is also a 2020 UF Hall of Fame inductee and a member of the Chapman Society, the UF College of Medicine’s chapter of the national Gold Humanism Medical Honor Society. Following his May graduation, he will begin his residency in internal medicine at the University of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill, as part of UNC’s Physician-Scientist Training Program.