MARCH 2008, Vol. 43, No.3

In Profile: Marcy Petrini: Unique Upbringing, Experiences Shape AAMI's Incoming Chair-Elect

Marcy Petrini, PhD, medical director and associate professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s division of pulmonary & critical care, has been nominated for a two-year term as AAMI’s Chair-Elect, putting her in line to become Chair of AAMI’s Board of Directors in 2010. In this edition of AAMI News, she shares a bit about herself, her career, and her hopes for the future of AAMI.

AAMI News: You have a unique personal background. Would you tell us a little about it?

Marcy Petrini: My father was Italian, and was serving in the Italian Armed Forces when Mussolini joined forces with Hitler. My dad simply couldn’t fight on the side of genocide, so he refused to fight, even though he knew that it could cost him his life. He was taken as a prisoner of war to a concentration camp in Germany; and eventually, with the help of a Frenchman who told him to lie about being a farmer, ended up on a farm working with a German family who treated him as family. There he met my mother, who is Lithuanian. She had fled Lithuania when it was in transition between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and was separated from her family.

My parents married in Germany and were saved by American forces. My dad brought mom back to Italy and promised her that he would help her reunite with her family. Eventually they learned that her mother and sister had settled in Cleveland, OH. Dad kept his word and we moved to the United States when I was 13. That’s how long it took to track everybody down.

AN: How did you discover the medical technology field?

MP: It was an evolution. In high school I liked science and loved my teachers, so
I wanted to be a teacher. In college, I focused on teaching, so I pursued a PhD in biophysics, mostly because I thought I didn’t know enough about it. There, my advisor — a pulmonologist — was developing techniques that required working with equipment and modifying it. He made me really like research and its challenges. I also became pretty good at software development.

Meanwhile, I met my husband-to-be, Terry Dwyer, who was building computers
to collect data for his own thesis. A marriage made in technology heaven! He bailed me out when I was in trouble with my equipment and taught me how to solder correctly, and we have even worked together interfacing equipment to instruments. After our post-doctoral fellowships, we both found jobs we liked in Mississippi.

AN: What does your work consist of at the University of Mississippi?

MP: I wear lots of different hats, and the diversity is probably what I like the most. I perform administrative and financial tasks, teach the fellows, and do research with them. My work as medical director of the pulmonary function laboratory has it all — there are four wonderful, dedicated women who test our patients. It is a very unusual job. On one hand, they have to maintain sophisticated equipment and make sure that the engineering standards of the equipment are met; on the other hand, they have to test patients who are sick and can’t always blow out as hard as they need to give us a good quality test. The staff does it all with empathy, grace, and smarts.

Pulmonary function testing is on the verge of a great technological breakthrough where it may be possible to determine functional parameters while the patient does nothing more than normal breathing.

AN: What inspires you about AAMI?

MP: The cooperation between the medical community, the medical instrumentation companies, and the bioengineering community, coming together for the safety of the patient. This cooperation was there from the very beginning, but it has evolved over time. AAMI has always been proactive, anticipating issues, and trying to find solutions before they become big problems.