Dr. Sarthak M.

Before attending the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Dr. Mohanty was accepted to the BS/MD program at The College of New Jersey with New Jersey Medical School, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, and earning the Biology Faculty Award for excellence in academics, service, and research. During medical school, he served in multiple educational leadership roles, including as an elected representative to the Undergraduate Medical Education Council and Vice President of Medical Student Government, partnering with senior faculty to redesign Penn’s four-year MD curriculum and assessment framework. He was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society and the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society in recognition of scholarship, leadership, and compassionate patient care.

Dr. Mohanty has a long record of high-impact scholarship spanning basic and translational musculoskeletal biology and clinical outcomes research. His work bridges mechanistic discovery and patient-centered impact—his translational research includes studies of developmental signaling pathways and musculoskeletal biology relevant to intervertebral disc degeneration and bone health. His clinical research focuses on improving decision-making and outcomes in spine surgery using rigorous epidemiology, propensity score methods, and machine learning.

Dr. Mohanty has co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts across leading orthopedic and spine journals, including Clinical Spine Surgery, the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine, the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, and JOR Spine. He has also delivered podium presentations nationally and internationally. He has led research teams as a Lead Author and Clinical Research Project Lead to produce 35 high-impact publications and presentations, alongside dozens of first-author contributions and national/international presentations. His work has been recognized with the Rhodes Prize for Surgical Scholarship, a University of Pennsylvania nomination for the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship, and multiple podium awards from the North American Spine Society and Scoliosis Research Society.

With years of research experience, Dr. Mohanty has guided students as they conduct research across biostatistics, developmental biology, stem cell biology, and health services and outcomes. Students he has mentored have been accepted to multiple top institutions, including Baylor College of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Emory University, the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine, the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, the University of Pittsburgh, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University.

As a mentor, Dr. Mohanty supports students who want to build durable research skills across the basic and clinical sciences. Mentees can expect structured guidance in developing a strong question, designing a feasible study, managing data responsibly, conducting appropriate analyses (including statistics and applied ML when relevant), and producing clear, conference- and publication-ready writing and presentations. Dr. Mohanty values clarity, intellectual honesty, and consistent follow-through, and enjoys helping students translate curiosity into publishable, clinically meaningful work.