DukeMed Alumni News

Erich Huang, PhD’02, MD’03, HS’03-’08, is head of clinical informatics at Verily, formerly Google Life Sciences. He has been a pathfinder since transitioning in 2016 from clinical care to biomedical informatics and later directing Duke Forge, an initiative to build a data science culture and infrastructure focused on actionable health data science across Duke University. In 2020 he was selected as Duke Health’s Chief Data Officer for Quality. Now the head of clinical informatics at Verily, formerly Google Life Sciences, his vision for the health care landscape remains centered on wielding artificial intelligence as a tool, not a replacement for the human touch.

If you want typical medical students, a typical admissions process might do. But Duke University School of Medicine is not looking for typical medical students. That’s why the admissions process is tailor-made to go beyond transcripts and test scores to identify students who will not only thrive at Duke but will also have a significant impact throughout their careers.

By any reckoning, Duke is one of the top organ transplant centers in the world, a leader in patient care and outcomes, innovative research, and training. Duke ranks among the top five transplant centers by volume, with some of the shortest average wait times and best survival rates in the U.S. Duke researchers are pushing the frontiers of the possible, not only in the operating room but also in tackling issues of equity and social factors that play an outsized role in transplant access and outcomes.

Recently developed technologies that maintain donor organs in a functioning state, perfusing them with warm nutrient- and oxygen-rich blood, have dramatically expanded the length of time organs can be kept viable and thus the distance they can be transported. These improvements make more transplants possible — a critical advance in a field where more than 100,000 people are on transplant waiting lists in the U.S.

Rosalyn “Roz” Bernstein Mannon, MD’85, HS’85-’90, professor of medicine, pathology, and microbiology and vice-chair for research in the Department of Medicine at the University of Nebraska, says more research is needed to understand how sex and gender affect transplant immunology, access, and outcomes. As past chair of Women in Transplantation, she has helped programs to fund such research internationally and to advocate for women in transplant around the world.

David Axelrod, professor of surgery and surgical director of kidney/pancreas and living donor transplant at the University of Iowa, explores the intersection of economics and medicine. Solid organ transplantation, he says, poses a unique set of complex challenges not only medically but also in terms of cost of care, organ allocation, and access to services.

Mary Louise Markert, PhD’81, MD'82, HS’82-’84, ’84-’87, is professor emeritus of pediatrics in the Division of Allergy and Immunology and professor emeritus of immunology at Duke University School of Medicine.

In 2022, Kurt D. Newman, MD’78 retired as president and chief executive officer of Children’s National Hospital, after a nearly 40 year career there. During his 11 years as CEO, the hospital soared from No. 18 to No. 5 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Children’s Hospital annual rankings, with neonatology maintaining the No. 1 spot for six consecutive years. 

Robert J. Lefkowitz, MD is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Medicine and a professor of biochemistry, pathology, and chemistry at Duke University School of Medicine. He is also a basic research cardiologist at the Duke Heart Center and a member of the Duke Cancer Institute. He has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 1976 and has spent most of his 50-year research career at Duke.

Kevin O. Saunders, PhD’10, is an associate professor in surgery, molecular genetics and microbiology, and in immunology. He is the faculty chairperson for the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee and associate director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI).