How to Link Love and Science and Live Happily Ever After

By Maryann B. Brinley

Take two gifted young medical student-scientists. Put them on the same academically demanding MD-PhD career track at New Jersey Medical School (NJMS). Let their paths cross one afternoon outside the director's office.

Fourth-year NJMS students Larry Koreen, PhD, MPH, and Irina Sigal Koreen, PhD, know the happy ending well: They were married on Aug. 10, 2003, the result of a dynamic match built on love between two people intent on living life to the fullest. Both share a dedication to medicine and research, will graduate from NJMS in May, and are pursuing ophthalmology residencies as a couple."Ideally, we'd like to be in the same program or near each other," Larry explains, underscoring a crossed path this couple has nearly perfected.

Six years ago, Larry was standing in the hallway speaking with the director of the MD-PhD program when Irina walked up to inquire about an upcoming meeting. Was it love at first sight? Perhaps, he recalls."I remember feeling a little nervous and I had that sudden rush of energy around her," he says."I was in my second year of medical school and she was in her first but we had both decided on the MD-PhD option." Since then, Irina, who was born in Moldova , a part of the former Soviet Union and whose family emigrated to the U.S. when she was 11, has caught up by finishing her PhD in three years in May, 2004, allowing them to enter their third year of medical school together."That wasn't easy. She did it in record time," Larry says describing his wife's hard work. However, hard work had been valued by each long before they met."It was funny when we learned that both of us were the valedictorians at our college graduations," he adds trying to explain how in sync their lives are.

Medicine and science are very much a part of the entire Koreen family. Larry's older sister teaches high school science while his younger sister, Susan, 24, is in her third year of medical school at Columbia and engaged to marry Matthew Wosnitzer, a fourth year student at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS)."Matthew, Irina and I will all graduate from UMDNJ in May, making for quite a celebration," he says.

Larry, 29, did his undergraduate work at Monmouth University and completed the PhD portion of his program in January, 2004, doing research on the importance of genetic variations in clinical strains of S taphylococcus aureus bacteria at the International Center for Public Health. At the same time, he studied at night to complete a Master's in Public Health."It was a perfect blend of research and public health for me. In four years, I got the PhD, as well as the MPH, did a six month post-doc and got married too," he laughs.

�It was hard but our parents helped a lot with the wedding," Irina, 26, adds. His folks live in Long Branch , her family is in Livingston and the couple commutes to Newark from Montclair ."Some days we find ourselves in the same hospital but not always," she says.

�Mine is a long and strange story," she laughs. Before entering medical school, while finishing her studies at NJIT in the UMDNJ seven year BS-MD program, she was contacted by NJMS professor Andrew Harris, PhD, who wanted her to consider the MD-PhD program. He had heard about her undergraduate research from a colleague and wanted her to join his lab. Irina told him that the option would"probably take too much time, too much commitment and was just too much of everything." An MD-PhD program can require more than seven years to complete. Harris persisted and offered her a job in his lab for the summer months before medical school started."After three weeks of summer work, I liked the project so much that when he asked me if I had changed my mind about getting the MD-PhD, I said that I had. This has been one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done, though it was hard." Irina's PhD research in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology focused on gap junctions, the intercellular coupling mechanism that underlies many physiological processes.

For Irina, a difficult part of the MD-PhD program was transitioning back and forth between research and medical school."They are two very different environments. In the PhD program, which begins after the second year of med school, you are completely on your own with no memorizing and no clinical or classroom time. When you go back to medical school after being away for several years doing research, writing and then defending your thesis, you enter your third year and find yourself with a whole new class of different students." It helped to have Larry alongside. He says,"I did the post-doctoral work for six months so Irina could catch up with me. It was very exciting studying MRSA (methicillin-resistant S. aureus ) which cause bacterial infections common to hospital environments." One of Larry's research aims was developing a new DNA-based typing test for these staph infections that have become so resistant to antibacterial medications."These infections are responsible for a wide range of human diseases," he says.

What attracted both the Koreens to ophthalmology is the versatility within this specialty which will offer them opportunities to combine surgery, clinical medicine and research."I can do clinical exams, surgery and also delve into ocular genetics looking for mutations in genes that might cause a patient to develop an eye disease. I'll also be able to study the epidemiology of eye diseases," he says.

Irina adds,"I'm interested in seeing patients and pursuing research in cellular communication." Two subspecialties that appeal to her are ocular pathology and neuro-ophthalmology."Having the PhD gives me the option to practice medicine, perform research as well as teach," she says, a talent she discovered when she became that big kid on the block her fourth year of medical school."I really enjoyed teaching the younger students."

Take two equally ambitious, multi-talented medical researchers who fall in love and this kind of happy ending might appear to be nearly impossible. This is a couple who also enjoy skiing, ballroom dancing and scuba diving, in fact. Competition could easily kill romance. But not in the case of the Koreens: a couple who has certainly mastered the arts of synchronicity and love above all else.