New faculty spotlight: Mary Edgerton, MD, PhD

Mary Edgerton, MD, PhD

Mary Edgerton, MD, PhD, is a new faculty member at UNMC.

  • Name: Mary Edgerton, MD, PhD
  • Hometown: Rio Grande City, Texas
  • Title and department at UNMC/Title at Nebraska Medicine: Professor, UNMC Department of Pathology and Microbiology

How I fell in love with pathology:

I attended medical school thinking that I would become a cardiologist, even though my favorite subject was pathology — all the mechanisms, the basics; it is, after all, the physics of medical education. Even so, I started out my residency in internal medicine. I was on call one night at the hospital and needed approval for a platelet transfusion. I had to call the pathology resident on call, and the double ring told me he was calling from his home. That’s all it took. I came in the next day and told my residency director that at the end of the year I was switching over to pathology. I love it and have never regretted my decision.

Education:

  • BS in physics, University of Texas at Austin
  • PhD in biophysics, University of East Anglia (Marshall Scholar)
  • MD, Medical College of Pennsylvania (now Drexel University College of Medicine)
  • Internal medicine internship, Medical College of Pennsylvania
  • Pathology residency, University of Pennsylvania
  • Surgical pathology fellowship, University of Pennsylvania

Memberships:

  • College of American Pathologists
  • Association of Pathology Informatics
  • Texas Society of Pathology
  • California Society of Pathology

Three things people may not know about me:

  • I still love physics. I rode in an elevator with Paul Dirac when I was an undergraduate and have met John Wheeler and Kip Thorne.
  • I am a rotating co-host of a storytelling radio show called “So What’s Your Story?” broadcast in Houston at 90.1 FM or online at KPFT.org HD1 livestreaming on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. Central. I am on once a month. The other co-hosts are amazing. So please join us. And contact me if you have a story to tell.
  • I am an avid birdwatcher, and I look forward to visiting birdwatching sites here in Nebraska.