On Wednesday, October 2, Parker’s 13th annual Visiting Scientist Dr. Dinee Simpson talked to students about the importance of recycling. But Simpson doesn’t work in environmental studies or study climate change. Instead, she recycles something a bit more unconventional: kidneys, livers and pancreases.

Simpson is the only African American female organ transplant surgeon in the city of Chicago. “It’s pretty interesting that in a city that’s so diverse, our physician population does not reflect the population we are serving,” Simpson said in an WGN9 interview. “But I’m happy to be here and to be serving the community.” 

Simpson is not just a trailblazer in Chicago’s medical scene. She’s also Parker’s first African American Visiting Scientist. “We wanted to see if we could get someone who was traditionally underrepresented in the area of science up on stage,” Science Department Co-Chair Angela Miklavcic Brandon said. “She was at the top of our list.”

On stage, Simpson talked briefly about her medical background––she completed her general surgery residency at Harvard University Medical School––but she also described the work she’s doing to help underserved African American communities with transplants.

Simpson leads an African American transplant outreach program at Northwestern. The program is dedicated towards increasing transplant accessibility and education.

“I would like to see, on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis, more African American patients in the operating room, getting the transplant that they need,” Simpson said in a WGN9 Interview. 

Simpson’s social justice work was one of the reasons why the Science Department was drawn to her. “It fits Parker’s mission,” Miklavcic said. “We want students to learn all this information and then do something with it, and then make a change.”

Science Department Co-Chair George Austin agrees. “We saw two different sorts of people we were able to get in one package,” Austin said. “We got to have that social justice aspect along with the science aspect.”

During her Morning Exercise, Simpson described what drew her to surgery as opposed to lab research. “I need instant results,” Simspon said on stage. She prefers to know whether she was successful or not as soon as possible, not months or years later. 

However, her goal to level the playing field for African Americans in need of transplant will take time. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, African Americans in Chicago have a significantly lower likelihood of being put on a transplant waitlist than whites.

Before her presentation, Dr. Simpson visited 9th grade biology classes to talk about the science side of her work. “She was really responsive to students’ questions,” Austin said. “She catered to where they were at and what they were curious about.”

Freshmen Litzy Tafolla agrees. “Dr. Simpson did a good job of combining two different things, activism and surgery, in an interesting way,” Tafolla said. 

Miklavcic wants Parker students to take away something from Simpson. “We want students to not just think about the details of the problem,” Miklavcic said, “but, ‘how do I make this better for lots of people out there?’”

Dr. Simpson will be returning to Parker on October 29th for an evening presentation. She will also be taking students to her office in the spring.