Team of Internationally Renowned Experts to Lead New Surgery and Transplant Research Center

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Mar 16, 2022, 09:00 ET

NEW YORK, March 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Dorry L. Segev, MD, PhD, whose global efforts have helped advance transplantation medicine, has joined NYU Langone Health to launch the Center for Surgical and Transplant Applied Research (CSTAR), an initiative that will further innovation in research and clinical excellence.

"This is a transformative time for transplantation medicine and an exciting opportunity to join NYU Langone, which continues to demonstrate pioneering leadership in the field," says Dr. Segev, who is a practicing transplant surgeon and the founder of Epidemiology Research Group in Organ Transplantation (ERGOT), a multidisciplinary enterprise at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that has authored more than 600 peer-reviewed articles and last year garnered more than $12 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as external sources.

Under Dr. Segev's leadership, ERGOT pioneered NIH-funded investigations into COVID-19 vaccination in immunocompromised transplant recipients. The groundbreaking study showed patients can benefit from a third vaccination dose while others may benefit from medication adjustments. The ERGOT team also led NIH-backed research on end-stage renal disease, forming an equitable HIV organ policy, incompatible kidney transplantation, living donor kidney donation, and geographic disparities in kidney and liver allocation. Its work led to national policy changes to increase organ transplantation access across the country.

In addition to directing CSTAR, Dr. Segev will serve as vice chair of research in the Department of Surgery. He is joined at NYU Langone by a team of renowned researchers, all of whom previously worked with Dr. Segev at Johns Hopkins. His team includes Sommer E. Gentry, PhD, a mathematician specializing in operations research and decision science, who will co-direct CSTAR and serve as director of its operations research core.

CSTAR will facilitate a broad range of clinical research in the Department of Surgery, the Transplant Institute, and throughout the entire health system to bridge gaps between active clinical practice and scientific research. Among its research objectives are to innovate protocols that expand transplant eligibility among patients previously deemed ineligible, investigate ways to enhance living donor kidney transplantation, better understand the surgical risk differential between physiologic and chronologic age, streamline processes that reduce disparities and improve access to surgical treatments, and introduce novel models of collaboration among clinicians across surgical disciplines to improve the patient experience.

"We are incredibly fortunate to welcome this extraordinary team of researchers and public policy makers to the NYU Langone faculty," says Robert Montgomery, MD, DPhil, the H. Leon Pachter, MD Professor of Surgery, chair of the Department of Surgery, and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute. "They will greatly complement our already outstanding clinical, research, and academic experts advancing the fields of transplantation, medicine, and surgery in groundbreaking areas, including xenotransplantation."

Drs. Segev and Gentry will be joined by Mara McAdams DeMarco, PhD, Macey L. Levan, JD, PhD, and Allan B. Massie, PhD.

About Dr. Segev
Before joining NYU Langone, Dr. Segev served as professor and associate vice chair in the Department of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he had been a member of the faculty since 2006. He also held a dual faculty appointment in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of Epidemiology. He holds bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Rice University, and obtained his medical degree at Johns Hopkins University, where he also completed his general surgery residency, a transplant surgery fellowship, a master's degree in biostatistics, and a doctorate in clinical investigation. He completed a three-year research fellowship in molecular biology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Segev is among the world's foremost experts in transplantation and has published more than 750 peer-reviewed original research articles on transplantation, general surgery, computational science, and molecular biology.

About Dr. Gentry
Dr. Gentry joins NYU Langone after serving as professor in the U.S. Naval Academy's Mathematics Department and as a research associate in the Department of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She holds a bachelor's degree in mathematical and computational sciences from Stanford University, where she also earned a master's degree in engineering-economic systems and operations research. She completed her doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a decorated researcher, having earned the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 1951 Civilian Faculty Excellence in Research Award, the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award, and the Mathematical Association of America Henry L. Adler Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning Faculty Member.

About Dr. McAdams DeMarco
Dr. McAdams DeMarco was director of the Johns Hopkins Surgery Center for Outcomes Research and director of clinical and outcomes research in the Department of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine before joining NYU Langone. She held dual faculty appointments in the Department of Surgery and the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University where she had been a researcher since 2009. She holds bachelor's degrees in statistics and Spanish from Carnegie Mellon University, a master's degree in epidemiology from Harvard University, and a doctorate in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University.

About Dr. Levan
Dr. Levan joins NYU Langone after six years as a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She was a core faculty member for ERGOT and in the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy, medical humanities, and health studies from Indiana University, a juris doctorate from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, and a doctorate in health policy and management from Indiana University's Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health.

About Dr. Massie
Before joining NYU Langone, Dr. Massie had been a researcher at Johns Hopkins University since 1999, starting in the Center of Imaging Science as a programmer. He most recently was an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery and director of data and analytics for ERGOT. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science as well as a master's degree and doctorate in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University.

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SOURCE NYU Langone Health