When Jason MacTaggart, M.D., was a kid, his family lived in the city during the week. But on the weekends, they headed out to the farm.
Award presentation today
The award presentation is 2:30 p.m. today in the Durham Research Center Auditorium with a reception to follow in the Maurer Commons.
The first place young Jason would run to was the machine shed. He couldn’t wait to get to work.
“It was kind of like this lab,” Dr. MacTaggart said. “Stuff all over the place. It was a bit chaotic. But you could see things next to other things, all kinds of tools and cool stuff you could put together in new ways.” Things that didn’t “belong” together, but there they were, sometimes randomly, right next to each other.
Where some saw a mess, he saw puzzle pieces. They gave him ideas on how to build new things using disparate parts. He came up with all kinds of inventions. He tinkered and built to his heart’s content.
Today, Dr. MacTaggart is assistant professor of surgery at UNMC. And it’s that kind of tinkering and invention that made him the 2016 winner of the Joseph P. and Harriet K. Gilmore Distinguished New Investigator Award.
He uses models, inventions and puzzle pieces to try to improve outcomes for vascular operations and procedures.
Dr. MacTaggart calls himself a “messy desk sort of person.” He embraces it – it works for him. But he’s also found a collaborator with a clean desk — Alexey Kamenskiy, Ph.D., assistant professor of surgery.
“He’s super-organized,” Dr. MacTaggart said. “He’s a big reason why all this stuff happened” – the grants, the inventions, the Collaboration for Advanced Surgical and Engineering Applications (CASEA) laboratory, and now this award.
As a surgery resident, on rotation with Tim Baxter, M.D., and former UNMC faculty Thomas Lynch, M.D., he was first exposed to vascular surgery. “I remember those cases as awesome,” Dr. MacTaggart said. He was hooked. “A lot of it seemed like basic plumbing, but with the added complexity of biology and medicine.”
He then trained for two years studying vascular surgery with world leaders and inventors in San Francisco before returning to Omaha to join the UNMC Department of Surgery. Along the way, Dr. MacTaggart used the local hardware stores and took materials home to make models, so he could tinker, invent and “practice” surgery.
He tells students and residents today: “It’s like basketball. You can’t just show up for the game and be ready to play.” You’ve got to do drills.
He still has a makeshift sim lab in his basement at home.
Words from Dr. Baxter stick with him: Just because somebody already did it, doesn’t mean you can’t do it better.
So that’s what he’s doing with his messy desk, and a lab he’s turned into a farm machine shed. He’s finding puzzle pieces, to put them together in a way no one had ever thought of before.
Congratulations and thank you for all you do for our nephrology patients!!!