Angela Rocchi: Reimagining What's Possible in Medicine

MD/PhD Biomedical Sciences

Angela “Rocchi” Rocchi is an MD/PhD Candidate at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. Her work, focused on the development of a CRISPR antiviral targeting the JC virus, received funding from the Interdisciplinary and Translational NeuroHIV Research Training Program of the National Institutes of Health. She was recently awarded the 2025 Investigator-in-Training Award from the International Society for Neurovirology, the first place prize for both Lewis Katz School of Medicine and Temple University 2025 3MT Competitions, and the 2024 Dawn Marks Award for Best Oral Presentation.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What is your degree program, and can you briefly describe the chain of events that led you to graduate school at Temple?

I’m in the biomedical sciences program, which is a dual degree program. Basically what that entails is your first two years you do pre-clinical in the trenches with all the other medical students, preparing for your first board exam. After those first two years of being indoors, studying nonstop, you leave your class and enter a lab and specialty of your choosing. I first matriculated here in 2019, and 2020 was a big year for medicine— not in a good way. I was in my first year of medical school when the pandemic hit. I dedicated myself to helping wherever I could, doing manual labor, setting up different sites for overflow patients, running transportation. I would study in the day, and at night I would go to Temple University Hospital, get in the full hazmat garb, and I would move beds. 

I saw firsthand that medicine is incredible, but it's very much in progress. And so to assuage that heartbreak that I think all doctors feel when there's nothing more they can do for a patient, I fell into research where we can kind of push the bounds of medicine to help patients in the future. This experience led me choosing neuroscience, which I would argue is the best cohort, and joining Dr. Khalili’s lab. Dr. Khalili is always spinning big philosophical questions about medicine and the future of medicine, and he was immediately ready to take me on as a student. I finished my PhD with him in three years, and now I'm back on clinical: Two years where I'm patient-forward, and once I've done that, I'll hopefully be in residency and I'll be a fully fledged doctor.

Can you tell us a little bit about your research? 

I work in the Center for Neurovirology and Gene Editing, and I actually have an NIH grant that's specific to translational medicine, which is really cool because it means I'm working on actual therapies that we're trying to get into the patient population. I work with CRISPR gene editing, which is pretty new; it basically allows us to edit the genome of humans or, in our case, viruses, to eliminate the disease. My disease of interest is JC virus, which is a virus that pretty much all of us have, but only really affects those who have immunosuppression. There isn’t really a treatment, which is where CRISPR comes in as this extreme new field of antiviral. 

Can you tell us more about your specific program? What do you like about it, and what kind of opportunities have come out of it?

The MD/PhD program is really cool because there aren’t very many of us, and every single one of us is insanely passionate about a different field. So I'm in neuroscience, there’s someone in lymphatics, someone in cardiovascular, someone in the Institute for Aging looking at calcium channel ions and how that affects Alzheimer’s, creating this wide spectrum of interests and each one of us is so, so in-depth with our research. Once a week we have grand rounds where we're presenting what we're working on, or a patient case that relates to the research we're doing. It's so rewarding. I retain that information much better than anything that I'm ever going to learn in a textbook, and it's cutting edge— things that are being published in scientific journals, not textbooks. I love my fellow MD/PhDs, and I'm really grateful for them being my teachers.

What do you consider your community at Temple?

I first matriculated as part of the class of 2023, so some of my friends that I got my white coat with are now going to be attendings that I'm rotating with, which is really nice, and they give me the inside scoop on what’s happening around the hospital. When they all matched and moved on, I found a separate community with the PhD students. The neuroscience cohort is led by Dr. Fossati and Dr. Thomas. They are so passionate, and they encourage their students to present weekly on topics outside of their field of research. So we all get together once a week and chat for an hour, whether it’s about drug abuse or brain regeneration or spinal cord injury… I think I've given like three lectures on how fish oil is going to save us all. 

Why did you pursue graduate study in Philadelphia? What do you enjoy about studying in the city?

Philadelphia is such an incredible community as a whole. A lot of the people at Amrita Yoga in Fishtown actually came to my dissertation defense, because they've been my spiritual community throughout all the good and bad. And then there’s the Boozy Mutt— a dog-friendly bar in Brewerytown. I actually have a couple of friends that are doctors at Penn and Drexel who I met through our dog children, which is wonderful. So, I've got my med school community, I've got my PhD community, and I've got my little dog community.

What impact do you hope your work / art will have within your field of study and beyond?

Having a CRISPR antiviral that I designed, if that led to an actual therapeutic that helped even one patient, I'd die happy. That would be incredible. Something that’s really unique that Dr. Khalili gave to me was the opportunity to be working in CRISPR when it’s so new. CRISPR antivirals are going to become a really important part of the future of medicine, I think, so however small my part is, that’s really special for me.

What are some specific challenges that grad school has helped you learn to face?

I’m a first-generation college graduate, so I was always prepared for the hard work and the long hours. What shocked me about grad school was working that hard and feeling like the rest of the world was moving past you. Watching your friends from high school get married and have kids, or watching your M.D. friends graduate, it can be bittersweet. But it's a really good way to convince yourself, like, this is what I want to be doing and this is what I care about. It kind of tests your resolve, and then once you come out on the other side of it, I think you feel a lot stronger.

What is one piece of advice you’d offer to a potential graduate student, or someone thinking about the dual MD/PhD program?

Anyone who's thinking about doing MD/PhD is already really driven, and they're already really empathetic and I have full faith that they're right for it, if they've considered all their options. Once you're in it, I think the best advice I give is to zoom out. Charlie Chaplin always said that life in a close-up is a tragedy, and on a wide lens it’s a comedy. And that’s so true. When you’re working all hours of the day, wondering if people respect you as much as you want them to, trying to prove yourself and claw your way up in your field, it’s easy to lose perspective. At the end of the day, if you zoom out, remember that what you're doing is important to you and that you’ve worked so hard to get to where you are, you can enjoy it a little more.