Dr. Michael Troka is a Graduate Coach with InGenius Prep, based in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Originally from small-town Wisconsin, Dr. Troka graduated as valedictorian of his high school class and was awarded the Herbert V. Kohler Scholarship — one of the most competitive merit scholarships in Wisconsin — which helped fund his undergraduate education. That same year, he was one of only four students in the country admitted directly from high school into the University of Pennsylvania’s 7-Year Bio-Dental Program, a combined-degree pathway to both Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences and its School of Dental Medicine.
At Penn, Dr. Troka earned his Bachelor of Arts in Biology, summa cum laude, in just two and a half years before matriculating to the School of Dental Medicine. He recently graduated with his Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD) with honors in Basic and Translational Research. This summer, he begins a six-year residency in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery that includes earning a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree — the surgical specialty at the intersection of dentistry and medicine.
As a student researcher, Dr. Troka developed TrokaChatML, a machine learning pipeline that uses single-cell sequencing data to identify the cellular signaling perturbations driving disease and predict therapeutic targets. The work has earned the AADOCR Hatton Award for First Place — the most prestigious honor in junior dental research — along with the ADA Foundation Most Promising Researcher Award, the AAOMS Oral Abstract Scientific Presentation Award, and the AADOCR Student Research Fellowship, among others. He has been invited to present nationally and internationally, including in Portland, New York, Washington, D.C., and Bogotá, Colombia, and his pipeline is now being applied to oral cancer samples in a clinical trial investigating the malignant transformation of premalignant lesions. He actively publishes his work in peer-reviewed journals. Alongside research, Dr. Troka served as a teaching assistant in fixed prosthodontics and head and neck gross anatomy, a peer mentor for first- and second-year dental students, president of the Oral Surgery Journal Club, and an alumni admissions interviewer for Penn Undergraduate Admissions.
As a Graduate Coach, Dr. Troka draws on his own experience navigating accelerated combined-undergraduate degree admissions, dental school, research fellowships, and a competitive surgical residency match to help students approach complex applications with confidence. He remembers what it felt like in high school — being curious and ambitious, but searching for guidance as you take the next step — and he wants the students he works with to understand that the work they are doing now will shape who they become and develop in to.
