Student snapshot

Mohsen Zakaib

Hometown: Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Class: Third-year medical student
Major: Engineering, concentration in electrical engineering
Career goals: Emergency medicine, internal medicine, critical care, trauma surgery

Mohsen Zakaib was an 8-year-old living in Beirut when fighting broke out between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary group, in 2006. Two sympathies grew out of the experience: an affection for refugees and a fascination with the medics.

“Though the world is so set on tearing itself apart,” he said, “at least there are some people set on doing something right.”

The family took refuge in Jordan. Then, a few years later, they moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where Zakaib finished high school before heading to N.C. State University to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nuclear engineering. But the pandemic rekindled his first career love: medicine.

“In Islam, we have this prayer, Salat al-Istikhara,” he said. “If you’re confused about a decision, you pray, and something will push you toward the opportunity or away from it.”

His spirit was being pushed toward medicine, and the Brody School of Medicine proved its own kind of blessing for Zakaib.

He was named a Brody Scholar, an award that covers tuition and fees and most living expenses for four years of medical school at ECU.

The carnage he witnessed in Lebanon has faded in his memory, but the fate of that moment becomes clearer as he moves closer to his calling.

“There’s a Quranic principle: Saving a single life is akin to saving all of humanity, while taking a life unjustly is akin to killing all of mankind,” he said. “That shows the value placed on preservation of life, and it’s at the very core of me.”