Two Drexel med students fell in ‘love at first incision.’ Now they’re off to practice military medicine together after graduation.

In anatomy lab, where first-year Drexel University College of Medicine students study the structure of the human body, Tharun Nandakumar would inevitably “slice through everything important.”

His randomly assigned lab partner, Alexa Smith, was meticulous and precise with a scalpel. Her dissection of the IT band, a thick band of connective tissue, was one of the best their professor had seen. Nandakumar recalled finding her skill “super impressive.”

It was “love at first incision,” he said.

While their approaches to dissection differed, their love of Harry Potter, family-oriented natures, and competitive spirits aligned. By the end of their first year in 2023, they were dating.

Now set to graduate on Thursday, the couple is beginning their careers together as doctors. They are among 292 students graduating with medical degrees as part of Drexel’s class of 2026.

Nandakumar and Smith worried they would be separated by hundreds of miles for residency training, especially since they were both in the federal government’s Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP), which covers the cost of medical school in exchange for service in the military as medical officers.

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It was “nerve-wracking,” Smith said. “If we weren’t in the same place, we were probably going to be across the country from each other.”

Fewer locations are available, compared to the residency match for trainees outside of the program. Both wanted family medicine, so they might have had to compete against one another.

They marketed themselves as a package deal.

“As long as we’re together, it doesn’t really matter where we end up,” Nandakumar said.

Nandakumar and Smith took different routes to their now-shared path.

Nandakumar, 25, emigrated from India when he was 6 months old and grew up in Virginia, where he went to college.

Alexa Smith, 26, grew up in Collegeville and attended the University of Pittsburgh before Drexel.

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At first, they would just occasionally attend class events together. But then Nandakumar reached out over social media, and Smith realized he wanted something more.

Their first date was mini golf.

Nandakumar won the game. Smith was the only one who got a hole-in-one.

On their second date, they sat and talked for eight hours.

They learned they both had an interest in “giving back to those who serve,” Nandakumar said. Though he was initially thinking of joining the Navy, he was convinced by a recruiter at Smith’s commissioning ceremony to choose the Army with her. (Both discussed backgrounds and opinions from their own perspectives, and not as representatives of the military.)

Their passion for primary care was another happy coincidence.

Nandakumar was inspired by his own pediatrician’s example of treating people with kindness and respect. Smith liked the variability in family medicine, where she could see kids, adults, and potentially practice obstetrics.

“As we started dating, we became more and more alike,” Smith said.

Their differing approaches to medical school also helped balance each other.

“Seeing her work really hard made me want to work really hard,” Nandakumar said.

Smith, who said she was more high-strung, appreciated being “with someone that made me take a chill pill and just enjoy life.”

The couple joined the Army in part so they could explore the world and practice medicine globally.

Together, they went to the Outer Himalayas in February, where they provided services with the Himalayan Health Exchange in India.

The chance to explore and leave the East Coast made Hawaii the ideal choice.

But the program only had six spots, meaning they would have to claim a third of them.

They waited to find out last Dec. 10 if they had succeeded.

Unlike in the civilian match, where results are revealed via an envelope, their news would come in the form of an email at noon.

On the morning of, Smith wanted to get up and go for a run to clear her mind. Nandakumar wanted to sleep until 11:59 and wake up to the email.

They ended up waking up late and relaxing before noon.

Nandakumar’s email came in first. In a rush, he opened it and read Tripler (the name of the Hawaii program).

At the same time, Smith received a notification on her phone: a preview popped up, ending with Tripler.

“It’s crazy that everything was able to work out,” Nandakumar said.