New Surgeon Spotlight: Larissa Epstein, MD, MBA
Larissa was born in Redwood City, CA where she grew up, but split her time between the San Francisco Bay Area Fall through Spring and spent her summers in her mother’s home town of Hesselbach (population 1,000) nestled in the farms lands of northern Bavaria working on the family farm and attending school. She attended the University of California at Davis where she was in the Davis Honors Program and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelors of Science in Animal Biology. She matriculated into the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science where she quickly grew to love general surgery and the immediate gratification it provided to not only her patients but also herself. She was very grateful and honored to return to her beloved California when she matched at the University of Southern California for her general surgery residency. In her year off between 3rd and 4th year, she forged a new path among surgical residents and travelled abroad to Rome, Italy in order to pursue a Masters in Business Administration at the Swiss School of Management. She obtained said degree after writing and defending her thesis comparing the unemployment rate and healthcare costs of the COVID-19 pandemic between Germany and the United States of America. In her 5th year, she was named as one of the education co-chiefs along with one of her fellow chief residents. She was excited to return to her alma mater, UC Davis, for a burns, critical care, and trauma fellowship. She feels especially privileged to be welcomed to the University of Utah Burn Unit under such excellent and admirable faculty. In her spare time she enjoys attending concerts, collecting vinyl records, reading novels, and traveling the world. Her favorite places include Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, and Iceland. Most recently she visited the Galápagos Islands and Sardinia. In addition, she is a proud and dutiful cat mom to her wonderful and gigantic Maine Coon cat, Boo (Radley).
