Three faculty members who are leaving the department gathered with colleagues at a farewell reception June 3.
Mary Edgerton, MD, PhD, a professor in the department, is retiring; two associate professors, Ana Yuil-Valdes, MD, and Jie Chen, MD, PhD, are leaving for other positions. The three were given bags with Nebraska-themed gifts, and they shared cake and conversation with many of the people they’ve worked with at UNMC.
Edgerton’s career has taken some twists and turns. She was a Marshall Scholar to the United Kingdom, where she completed a PhD in biophysics, using mathematical models to study membrane-bound reactions in Archaebacteria. She completed two postdoctoral fellowships in the U.S., then went to work for two of the largest oil and gas companies in their refinery research facilities where she developed mathematical models of catalytic processes. After nine years of research, Dr. Edgerton attended medical school, followed by an anatomic and clinical pathology residency and a surgical pathology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. She was on the faculty at Vanderbilt University, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center before coming here in 2023.
Dr. Edgerton plans a nice, slow start to her retirement. “I plan to stay in my pajamas for three weeks,” she said. But soon she’ll head home to the family ranch in south Texas to plan her oldest daughter’s wedding. And in January, she’s traveling to Antarctica, the only continent she hasn’t visited before.
When she’s not traveling, she likes to garden and paint. “I may try writing. I like to tell people I’m going to write the story of my life, and I’m not changing any names, because there’s no innocent to protect. I have a few ideas for some novels. I’m a storyteller.”
She also works as an adjunct professor, “and I’ve been talking to some people in the data aggregation area about putting in a grant. So I’m not quite quitting.”
“I’ve had a wonderful time here,” she said.
Dr. Yuil-Valdes came to UNMC in 2015 for a fellowship in surgical pathology, followed by a hematopathology fellowship before joining the department’s faculty. She is joining the faculty at the Cleveland Clinic. The move allows her to rejoin her husband, who had taken a job in Ohio.
“It’s going to great to be back as a family. Because being apart is difficult,” she said. “At the Cleveland Clinic, my main area will be cytopathology, so I will keep working with cytology.”
I’m thankful to UNMC, because everything that I’ve been achieving in my professional life the last 11 years, I owe that to UNMC. And I think I am what I am today because of everything I’ve done at UNMC. And I would be thankful for that. I need to acknowledge that. This was my first job as a faculty member.”
Dr. Chen, who came to UNMC in 2019 after completing a fellowship in neuropathology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is leaving for Emory University in Atlanta, where she will continue working in neuropathology. “They have a higher volume (of cases) there, so that’s the main reason. I can focus on neuropathology—it’s more specialized.”
But leaving is still hard. “I have been here seven years, since before the pandemic. This is my first job. I graduated from my fellowship and directly came here. I’ve learned a lot. Most of the time I enjoyed my work. That’s why I stayed here for a long time—I enjoyed it, teaching the residents. I liked working with my colleagues. The students were so wonderful. I’ve enjoyed my life here.”