How Matei Caleap Discovered the Overlap Between Medicine and Engineering
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Fourth-year University of Miami Miller School of Medicine student Matei Caleap didn’t decide on a career as a physician until his junior year of college. The University of Florida biomedical engineering major had always assumed he’d follow his parents’ footsteps and become an engineer. Then one summer, while visiting the Detroit area, Caleap—who was born in Romania and raised in West Palm Beach among South Florida’s Romanian community—tagged along with a family friend who’s a physician.
“I shadowed her with her patients in clinic,” he said.
Seeing the way patients interacted got him thinking about a different career path. He liked how his physician friend related to her patients and how they related to her, asking about each other’s families and making personal connections. By the end of the summer, he’d made up his mind to switch his major to biology and apply to medical school.
Finding the Solution to a Problem
But the change wasn’t 180 degrees.
“Medicine has a little overlap with engineering,” said Caleap. “In engineering, you are always looking for a solution to a problem. That challenge is what always has attracted me.”
He sees the same sort of challenge in medicine, with physicians asking “What’s going on? What is the solution to this problem?”
When he started his clinical rotations at the Miller School, Caleap found himself falling in love with all things procedural.
“One of my hobbies is working on my car,” he said. “That goes with my engineering background.”
Caleap enjoyed the step-by-step demands of his surgical rotations but was still mindful of his love for cerebral tasks. Alongside his passion for working with his hands, he felt that setting his goals towards a field such as gastroenterology would fit his future career goals.
During Caleap’s third year at the Miller School, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. His mother’s experience helped him appreciate what it’s like to be on the patient side and how scary a diagnosis like that can be.
“In medical training, we can get disconnected from the human aspect,” he said. “We get caught up in solving a problem, sometimes not taking into consideration how our patients and their families are feeling.”
While his mother’s experience didn’t change his career trajectory, he said, it broadened his understanding of the perspective of patients and their families.
Caleap is pleased to report that “she finished chemotherapy and radiation and is doing well on her journey to recovery.”
Education, Administration
Throughout medical school, Caleap has benefitted from outstanding mentorship, especially from Sabrina Taldone, M.D., and Marie Anne Sosa, M.D.
“Dr. Sosa is our longitudinal clinical educator,” he said. “She has seen me through the ups and downs of my career path and choices, developing me professionally and giving me life advice.”
Dr. Taldone, he said, has mentored him in his research and quality improvement.
“Quality improvement is based on an engineering mindset,” said Caleap. “It’s looking at a system and asking what kind of changes can be implemented.”
Caleap plans to be involved in medical education, either as an administrator or a professor, noting that his mother teaches math and calculus to high school and community college students. As an undergraduate, Caleap was a teaching assistant in biochemistry and genetics. At the Miller School, he is part of a peer advising support group.
“The knowledge we gain is important and it’s important to help pass that knowledge down to younger generations,” he said.
As Match Day approaches, Caleap says he feels confident about a residency in internal medicine that will lead to a gastroenterology fellowship.
Tags: internal medicine, Match Day, Match Day 2025, medical students, Miller School of Medicine, student leadership