Medical Student
Chicago Medical School
Rikhil Makwana is currently a third year MD candidate at Rosalind Franklin University's Chicago Medical School where he serves as the Student Dean—a role in which he works closely with the dean of the medical school and acts as representative of Chicago Medical School students to the rest of university.
He has also served three, yearlong terms on the Illinois State Medical Society's Economic Council (2022-23) and the Government Affair's Council (2023-25) where he introduced and passed resolutions aimed at codifying the protection of reproductive rights in Illinois state law and met with state senators to change wording of Illinois state law that would have made child survivors of abuse more susceptible to harm.
Rikhil is actively working alongside four research mentors—Dr. Julie Schwertfeger (TBI and Polytrauma), Dr. Mark Conneely (Radiology), Dr. Melissa Chen (Internal Medicine), and Dr. Gholson Lyon (Child and Adolescent Psychiatry)—on various projects across each of their respective fields. He currently does not know what he wants to pursue after graduation, but he believes that if he maintains open minded to new experiences, he cannot choose wrong.
He was the Chicago Medical School’s Mission scholarship award recipient in 2022, the Chicago Medical School’s Dean’s Scholarship recipient in 2023, and the Tylenol Future Care’s Scholarship recipient in 2023. Most recently he was accepted as a member of the Aliabadi-Kazim Scholars Program Fellowship in urology at the University of Minnesota College of Medicine—an award especially meaningful to him due to his father’s history of prostate cancer.
Outside of medicine, Rikhil has a passion for education and is the Chief Product Officer of the Scientific Coat Initiative for Future Innovators. Since the 501c3 nonprofit’s conception in 2013, Rikhil and his team have delivered tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of scientific equipment to schools to inspire the innovators of tomorrow.
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