Born in Battambang, Cambodia, Sok Thim entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Phnom Penh in 1973. Unfortunately, his education was cut short by war and he was forced to leave the university after two years when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in April 1975. Sok Thim fled Cambodia for the Thai-Cambodian border in 1981 and began to work and study with the American Refugee Committee (ARC) where he became first a nurse, then health worker and then manager of the ARC TB Program before becoming the TB coordinator for all of the refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border. Sok received his M.D. from the International University of Phnom Penh in 2006.

Sok is the principle investigator of the CIPRA grant from the NIH and is a coordinating investigator of the CAMELIA study. He also leads the Multi-Drug Resistant (MDR) tuberculosis project that CHC is pioneering on behalf of the Cambodian National TB Program.  In this capacity, he is developing the training plan and treatment approach to diagnose, treat and prevent the spread of MDR TB.