Unity native, medical student caps undergrad swim career with Academic All-American honor
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Time is precious for Mikayla Bisignani as she begins her first year as a Pitt medical student.
Still, the Unity native hopes to find the opportunity to take her standout swimming career in a new direction, as a coach.
She’s been offered a part-time assistant swimming/strength and conditioning position at Carnegie Mellon University.
“I see it as a potential stress-reliever, and to keep that athletic identity a part of my life,” she said.
Bisignani’s academic and athletic achievements at Johns Hopkins University earned her degrees in May in psychology and molecular and cellular biology, a cumulative GPA of 3.99 and the title of 2021 CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) Academic All-American of the Year.
As a member of the Blue Jays women’s swim team, she also was named a First Team Academic All-American for the third time in her career — a first in the history of Johns Hopkins athletics. She is the third women’s swimmer and the seventh athlete at the university to earn CoSIDA Academic All-American of the Year honors.
Part of the 200 Free Relay team that finished fourth at the 2019 NCAA Championships, she also qualified for subsequent NCAA championships that weren’t held in 2020 and this year, because of the covid-19 pandemic.
Additionally, she was a member of the Johns Hopkins outdoor track and field team, where she was a two-time Centennial Conference champion in discus.
“It felt pretty surreal when I found out I was chosen,” Bisignani said of her All-American of the Year award. “It’s a huge honor, and I was very humbled. Looking back on my experience, I owe so much of my success to my teammates and coaches.”
Bisignani, 21, a Greensburg Central Catholic alumna, sees her greatest achievement in collegiate swimming as “just competing all four years and sticking with it. Once I got started, I was inspired by my teammates, and I worked harder than I ever thought I could.”
That work definitely paid off.
“It’s been a joy to get to work with her,” said Scott Armstrong, her swimming coach at Johns Hopkins. “Mikayla pours herself into everything she does, not out of any sort of internal drive to achieve for herself. Rather, she is the type of student-athlete that is focused on lifting those around her up.”
Bisignani, who now lives in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood, found other worthy pursuits outside of studies and swim meets at Johns Hopkins.
She mentored two freshman Blue Jays athletes and served as a tutor for other university students and for elementary pupils. She also was a volunteer caregiver for a patient with multiple sclerosis.
Inspired by a cousin and others she knows who are battling the disease, Bisignani participated in a Mt. Pleasant-area triathlon that raised money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. She completed the swimming leg, her dad, Greg, handled the biking, and a cousin ran the remaining segment.
“I trained a little to get back into the water to compete again,” she said. “I’d like to have more experiences like that.”
At Johns Hopkins, Bisignani was vice president of the Undergraduate Bioethics Society and co-founder and lead mentor for the Pre-Health Student Advisory Board.
She also was a project leader for the university’s chapter of Enactus, a global organization that addresses social issues through entrepreneurial action. Her team’s project involved creating soap and facial scrubs with coffee grounds from local coffee shops. Money from sales of the products was reinvested in the community, she said.
“I looked into the science,” Bisignani said. “They’re really great for your skin. The scrub is very exfoliating, and it’s better for the environment than exfoliating beads that get stuck in your drain.”
Bisignani found the time as an undergraduate to become a yoga instructor, a side interest she hopes to pursue again, once her schedule at Pitt permits it.
She’s also interested in combining her medical mission with her skills on the piano and trumpet, by taking part in a program that enlists Pitt medical students with musical abilities to perform for hospitalized UPMC patients.
“It’s a cool experience to give that gift to a patient while brightening their day,” she said. “It doesn’t take too much time to play for someone.”
Bisignani has served as a research assistant in the Johns Hopkins Laboratory for Child Development and in the Neuroendocrinology Lab at Saint Vincent College.
Most recently, she took part in a research project in the Duvvuri Lab at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She worked on improving an immunotherapy treatment for cancers of the head and neck.
That experience sparked Bisignani’s interest in a potential career as an ear, nose and throat specialist, but she’s also considering various surgical sub-specialties.
“I’m not certain just yet,” she said of her ultimate career goal. “I’m taking the time to figure it out.”