Carle Illinois College of Medicine student Manaka Sato is the college’s most recent graduate selected for medical residency in the competitive specialty of urology.
Sato was chosen to serve her six-year medical residency at the University of California-Los Angeles program, which accepts only four residents each year. “UCLA Urology is a phenomenal place to train with so many leaders in the field to learn from. They have consistently been ranked highly and have an amazing depth and breadth of expertise, including kidney transplant and gender-affirming care,” Sato said.
Sato follows in the footsteps of Dr. Kanesha Overton (Class of 2023), who last year matched into urology at the University of Washington. “Women are very much underrepresented in urology. Everyone has a urinary system, but urology continues to be a male-dominated specialty. However, the field of urology has made significant efforts in recent years to address this disparity by increasing outreach to female medical students, which is one of the reasons why I love this field so much,” Sato said. Dr. Matthew Lee (Class of 2022) was the college’s first graduate to match into urology, serving at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Like many of her CI MED peers, Sato has an engineering background that she believes will serve her well in her chosen field. “I’m hoping to use my engineering background and my experiences as an immigrant to better understand and address disparities within urology and in medicine,” Sato said. Born in Tokyo, Japan, Sato moved to the US when she was three years old. She’s currently enrolled in CI MED’s student-created medical Japanese course to maximize her bilingualism for the benefit of her future patients.
“UCLA Urology has everything I was looking for in a program – great people, a diverse patient population, a wide variety of cases, all in a city I love,” Sato said. She will begin her residency at UCLA in July.
Urology is one of the few specialties to announce residency matches on a separate schedule. The National Resident Matching Program’s main Match Day for most specialties will be held on Friday, March 15, 2024.