'Genius' pair rewrite rules of organ transplants, among other interests
Baltimore Sun | Mary Carole McCauley
Photo: Dorry Segev, left, and Sommer Gentry, practice swing dancing in their dance studio. Their four-level Canton rowhouse is a haven for their varied interests in music, dancing, and entertaining, as well as their academic research. (Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun photo / November 6, 2012)
Think of Dorry Segev and Sommer Gentry as intellectual magpies.
The glittery ideas they filch from fields as diverse as swing dancing, systems analysis, water skiing and medicine seemingly have little in common. But Segev and Gentry weave them together into a strong yet flexible structure designed to protect fragile lives.
Segev, 41, is a transplant surgeon at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, a pianist who studied at Juilliard and a former computer prodigy. Gentry, 35, an assistant mathematics professor at the Naval Academy, was a doctoral student when she caught the public's attention by designing a dancing robot.
In addition, the couple are champion swing dancers and avid slalom water skiers.
"I try to do something every day that I'm not good at," Segev says. "I don't want to go through life only practicing things I've already learned how to do. I embrace the process of improvement."
The two are poised to influence the nation's public health policy â€" and for the second time in seven years. They recently finished testing a formula that seeks to ensure that sick people in need of livers have equal access to donated organs, regardless of where in the U.S. they live.
By the fall of 2013, the Organ Transplantation Procurement Network â€" the governing body for the nation's transplant distribution system â€" is expected to decide whether to adopt Segev and Gentry's formula nationwide.
Experts say the liver algorithm has the potential to be as significant as the couple's 2005 breakthrough, when they devised a mathematical equation that exponentially increased the number of donors who can be matched with patients awaiting kidney transplants. In the past seven years, that discovery has either saved or dramatically improved thousands of lives throughout the U.S.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
Photo: Dorry Segev, left, and Sommer Gentry, practice swing dancing in their dance studio. Their four-level Canton rowhouse is a haven for their varied interests in music, dancing, and entertaining, as well as their academic research. (Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun photo / November 6, 2012)
Think of Dorry Segev and Sommer Gentry as intellectual magpies.
The glittery ideas they filch from fields as diverse as swing dancing, systems analysis, water skiing and medicine seemingly have little in common. But Segev and Gentry weave them together into a strong yet flexible structure designed to protect fragile lives.
Segev, 41, is a transplant surgeon at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, a pianist who studied at Juilliard and a former computer prodigy. Gentry, 35, an assistant mathematics professor at the Naval Academy, was a doctoral student when she caught the public's attention by designing a dancing robot.
In addition, the couple are champion swing dancers and avid slalom water skiers.
"I try to do something every day that I'm not good at," Segev says. "I don't want to go through life only practicing things I've already learned how to do. I embrace the process of improvement."
The two are poised to influence the nation's public health policy â€" and for the second time in seven years. They recently finished testing a formula that seeks to ensure that sick people in need of livers have equal access to donated organs, regardless of where in the U.S. they live.
By the fall of 2013, the Organ Transplantation Procurement Network â€" the governing body for the nation's transplant distribution system â€" is expected to decide whether to adopt Segev and Gentry's formula nationwide.
Experts say the liver algorithm has the potential to be as significant as the couple's 2005 breakthrough, when they devised a mathematical equation that exponentially increased the number of donors who can be matched with patients awaiting kidney transplants. In the past seven years, that discovery has either saved or dramatically improved thousands of lives throughout the U.S.
Read more
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
Comments
Post a Comment