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A large impact in small world; South grad looking to make advancements in biomedical field

By Douglass Huxley 5 min read

PARKERSBURG -- Recent Parkersburg South High School graduate Sundance Lewis is looking to make big advances in the microscopic world as she heads off to Marshall University in the fall to study biomedical engineering.

"Biomedical engineers are the ones who make dialysis machines, and pacemakers; they work on those types of things to advance medicine," Lewis said. 'They have a good program there, it's a great program, and I already got accepted into their science and engineering program."

Lewis said the school is good about helping students find their way after graduating, too, and she doesn't want to stop at just getting her bachelor's degree. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in medical research.

"Ultimately, I want to be a part of the people who are working on synthetically creating organs, which might seem wild to a lot of people" Lewis said.

Lewis also wants to pursue a PhD in genetic engineering, where she can create synthetic organs for those in need.

"I want to experiment using the blueprints of DNA inside of a synthetic cell," Lewis said.

"I could develop it. Because a body can't reject it's own DNA."

Lewis said she found out her freshman year that there are over 100,000 people on UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing) and only about 20,000 receive an organ.

"That's 80,000 that don't," Lewis said. "There's children; there's parents; there's everyone. It's insane."

Lewis said she wants to take samples of people's DNA to see if she can strip away the disease coding, or genetic mutations, that then could be used to make an organ to replace the one damaged.

"People, even after they receive an organ transplant, it doesn't always work," Lewis said. "The statistics terrify me. I think it's an 85% chance of failure for six months after the operation, and after that, it is still a 70-something percent chance of failure. After five years, it drops down to 65% but that's still over a 50% chance of that organ failing at any moment. Then you take immunosuppressant four times a day, on the clock. That's terrifying to me."

Lewis said she's not interested in the money she could make off of any new advancements.

"I'm only doing it for the future of it (medical advancement)," Lewis said. "I have no idea if I could create anything out of it that I could make money on; I'm trying to help towards the advancement of it."

That urge to help with the advancement of medicine also has Lewis thinking of getting a third Ph.D. in neuroengineering, which is a discipline within biomedical engineering that uses engineering techniques to understand, repair, replace or enhance neural systems.

"I would like to add and contribute to the developing of any kinds of machinery that could help towards revitalizing, or mimicking, nerve function," Lewis said. "Because that would do so much for so many people."

Lewis has already been saving people as she's spent the last years as a lifeguard at the City Park pool.

"It's always scary, I have a lot of saves, but it doesn't make it any less scary," she said.

Lewis said she remembered one time she was working a pool party and a lady told her it took a special kind of person to do a job that could help to save a life.

She said there was just a few minutes left until the party ended when a 2-year-old girl fell into the pool.

"They took her puddle jumper off of her to leave," Lewis said. "I jumped in immediately after, and I had her, and I got her out with her mom. We did an incident report, and I told her to watch her breathing. The lady comes back up to me and says, 'I told you.'"

Lewis was a member of the student council at South and even served as the president for the West Virginia State Student Council.

"We went to Illinois, for the Region Five Summit, which was really fun to do," Lewis said. "And then we all went to D.C. as well. We got to tour the Capitol and different things. It was really fun."

Lewis was also a member of the Patriot tennis team, where she received the Ohio Valley Athletic Conference tennis scholarship that will help with her education at Marshall University.

In her free time, Lewis said she likes collecting old medical dictionaries and journals, sewing, reading, and learning new languages. She said she's pretty good with Spanish, where she said she writes and reads it better than speaking, and wants to learn at least three more.

"I've always been interested in learning several languages," Lewis said. "

Eventually I want to be fluent in Spanish, sign language, and I kind of really want to get French under my belt. And then I kind of want to learn another European one, or possibly an Asian one, but I'm so scared of even touching that."

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com

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