When Dr Sophia David Amirtharajan was completing her medical degree, she had plans to become an obstetrician however she was drawn to medical education.

Fast forward a decade and Sophia is a senior lecturer teaching specialist with the NT Medical Program based in Darwin at the Flinders CDU campus.

She’s the Year 2 clinical skills coordinator – looking after the doctor and patient learning.

Sophia made the trip up north at the beginning of the year from Brisbane with her family where she worked at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Queensland for 10 years.

She said the sea change had been great, “it’s a huge change from having like 1000 students to like 48 students”.

Sophia was raised in India as the daughter of university professors and completed her Doctor of Medicine in the Philippines.

Ever since moving to Australia in 2011, Sophia has been drawn towards teaching medicine.

“It’s just something about teaching like I’m constantly learning too, from students, which is amazing,” Sophia says.

“And I have to keep myself updated all the time, because I’m teaching new students who are literally babies growing into medicine, which is challenging and nice.

“And to be honest, I’ve learned a lot throughout this journey in medical education from my students, by teaching and then receiving feedback, and sometimes we get challenging questions and then not always I have the answers, so I do go and research and then learn with my students, which is amazing.”

When Sophia isn’t teaching the next generation of doctors, she is busy whipping up a storm in the kitchen.

“I used to cook a lot in Brisbane because I was part of a program where we had lots of refugees come in weekly, so I would just cook meals for 30 or 40 people every Sunday, we would just cook food from home and take it to share,” she said.