Vision Seminar Series

Nisha Acharya, MD, MS, Director, Uveitis and Ocular Inflammatory Disease Service, Elizabeth C. Proctor Distinguished Professor, Departments of Ophthalmology, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Associate Director, F.I. Proctor Foundation, University of California, San Francisco.

Dan Yoon, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences UMass Chan Medical School

Claudio Punzo, PhD, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology, Vice Chair of Research, Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, UMass Chan Medical School

Juan Ding, OD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and James Ledwith, MD, FAAFP, Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health

Alessandro Iannaccone, MD, MS, FARVO, Professor of Ophthalmology Director, Center for Retinal Degenerations and Ophthalmic Genetics Diseases Director, Duke Visual Function Diagnostic Laboratory Program Director, Duke Fellowship in Retinal Degenerations and Ophthalmic Genetics Co-Medical Director, Retina Module, Duke Eye Center Clinical Research Unit

Paul S. Bernstein, MD, PhD, Val A. and Edith D. Green Presidential Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Vice-Chair for Clinical and Basic Science Research Moran Eye Center, University of Utah School of Medicine.

The 2022-2023 Seminar Series includes speakers from across the entire United States as well as local speakers with a focus on inherited as well as acquired retinal diseases and their therapeutic approaches including gene therapy.

Emma Wood, Evan Bilsbury, Sean Doherty, Moradi Mousa, Tianxiao Huan, PhD

Johanna Seddon, MD, ScM, Department of Ophthalm ology & Visual Sciences

University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.

Johanna M. Seddon, MD, ScM, Professor of Ophthalmology, UMass Chan Medical School Director of Retina, Director of Macular Degeneration Center of Excellence Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences

Darren J. Lee, PhD Assistant Professor, Departments of Ophthalmology, Microbiology and Immunology, Division of Vision Research, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Dean McGee Eye Institute, Oklahoma City, OK

Martin-Paul Agbaga, PhD Assistant Professor, Director of Lipidomics Core Facility University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Departments of Ophthalmology and Cell Biology Dean McGee Eye Institute, Oklahoma City, OK

William Spencer, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow Department of Ophthalmology, Duke University

Timothy W. Corson, PhD Merrill Grayson Senior Associate Professor Vice-Chair for Basic and Translational Research Eugene and Marilyn Glick Eye Institute, Indiana University School of Medicine

Ashok Kumar, PhD Associate Professor, Department of Ophthalmology, Visual and Anatomical Sciences Wayne State University School of Medicine, Kresge Eye. Institute

Bo Tian, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences

The Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the UMass Chan Medical School is happy to announce our next speaker Shun-Yun Cheng, PhD

Jasmeet Singh, MD, Associate Professor of Neurointerventional Radiology; Program Director, Neurointerventional Radiology Fellowship Program, UMass Memorial Medical Center.

Eli Peli, MSc, OD Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School, Senior Scientist, Moakley Scholar in Aging Eye Research, Schepens Eye Research Institute Massachusetts Eye and Ear

Steven J. Fliesler, PhD, FARVO, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Meyer H. Riwchun Endowed Chair, Professor of Ophthalmology, Vice-Chair for Research, Department of Ophthalmology, Director, Ira G. Ross Eye Institute Vision Research Center, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York (SUNY)

Pradeepa Yoganathan, MD, MSc, FRCSC, Associate Professor, Department of Ophthalmology Vision and Anatomical Sciences, Wayne State University, Assistant Professor, Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences, University of Toronto

Mary Elizabeth Harnett, MD, Distinguished Professor in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of Utah Calvin S. and JeNeal N. Hatch Presidential Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Director of Pediatric Retina. Principal Investigator Retinal Angiogenesis Laboratory, John A. Moran Eye Center.

Bo Chen, PhD, Associate Professor, Director of Ocular Stem Cell Program, Department of Ophthalmology, Department of Neuroscience, Department of Cell, Developmental and Regenerative Biology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Shannon E. Boye, PhD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics/Associate Chief, Division of Cellular and Molecular Therapy, Department of Pediatrics, University of Florida

David G. Hunter, MD, PhD, Ophthalmologist-in-Chief and Richard M. Robb Chair at Boston Children’s Hospital, Professor and Vice Chair of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School

Laura Wayman, MD, Professor and Vice Chair for Education, James H. Elliot Endowed Director, Department of Ophthalmology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Joern B. Soltau, MD, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Dr. William H. and Mrs. Blondina F. Evans Endowed Chair Kentucky Lions Eye Center

This seminar provides an overview of key social determinants of health, unpacks the underlying drivers of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic health inequities in the U.S., and promotes discussion of opportunities to advance health equity in health care.

Christopher Teng MD, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at Yale University School of Medicine and the Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs and Director of the Glaucoma Service and Glaucoma Fellowship was our Vision Seminar’s first speaker in 2020.

Andrew Lam, M.D., is a retinal surgeon and award-winning author of three books: Saving Sight, an Amazon bestseller about his surgical career, Two Sons of China, a novel of WWII that won a Foreword Reviews' Book of Year Award in 2014, and his latest novel, Repentance, based on the history of the famed Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team of WWII.

Judy E. Kim, MD is an internationally well-known vitreoretinal specialist and a Professor of Ophthalmology with tenure at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Kim was the honorable guest speaker of the October Vision Seminar and discussed the interesting topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in ophthalmology.

Jennifer Lim, MD, the Marion H. Schenk Chair Professor of Ophthalmology, and the director of the Retina Service, University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary in Chicago, was the honorable first Vision Seminar guest for the new academic year. She skillfully summarized the history and the current clinical approach to the diagnosis and management of sickle cell retinopathy.

Several members of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, UMass Chan Medical School participated in the ARVO 2019 annual meeting from April 28-May 3, 2019 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The participants also presented their findings at the Ophthalmology Vision seminar series on June 20, 2019 at the UMass Chan Medical School. Here are the highlights of their presentation day:

Kathryn Colby, MD, PhD, an internationally renowned academic cornea specialist, was April’s Vision Seminar guest speaker. Dr. Colby serves as Chair of Ophthalmology at the University of Chicago, where she is the Louis Block Professor. She discussed a special prevalent corneal condition, common in women, named: Fuchs’ dystrophy, which is the most common cause for corneal transplantation in the US.

The Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at UMass Chan Medical School kicked off spring with our distinguished vision seminar speaker Dr. Raju V.S. Rajala, PhD, M.G. McCool Chair in Ophthalmology and Professor of Physiology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

Michael E Boulton, the Susan and Dowd Ritter/RPB Endowed Chair and Professor in Ophthalmology Research, University of Alabama, former Head of the School of Optometry and Vision Sciences, Cardiff University, UK, was the honorable guest speaker of January’s Vision Seminar.

Mark Johnson, MD, Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the Kellogg Eye Center at the University of Michigan was the honorable guest speaker of November’s Vision Seminar.

Joan Miller, MD, FARVO, the David Glendenning Cogan Professor of Ophthalmology and Chair of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School was the Vision Seminar distinguished speaker in September 2018. Dr. Miller also serves as Chief of Ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Members of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, UMass Chan Medical School participated in the ARVO 2018 annual meeting from April 29-MAy 3, 2018 in Hawaii. The participants also presented their findings at the Ophthalmology Vision seminar series on June 21, 2018 at the UMass Chan Medical School. Here are the highlights of their presentation day:

Vision Seminar guest speaker, Lucian Del Priore, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at Yale University and chief of ophthalmology at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH), summarized decades of basic bench research and advanced clinical research in the field of stem cell transplantation.

Henry J. Kaplan MD, FACS, was April’s Vision Seminar guest speaker. He summarized the work he has been doing over the past decade with collaborators at the University of Louisville, and other universities across the nation. His research team has found a way to revitalize cone receptors that have deteriorated as a result of the blinding disease, retinitis pigmentosa (RP).

Haijiang Lin M.D., Ph.D, a clinician-scientist concentrating on the field of retinal diseases is the Director of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences Translational Research Center. He gave a special Vision Seminar talk discussing the role of cytosolic accumulation of nuclear DNA (nDNA) in Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) pathogenesis.

Dr. Zegans is a Professor of Surgery and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Dartmouth College. He currently serves as the Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at Dartmouth College.

Dr. Thiran Jayasundera, Associate Professor at the Kellogg Eye Center at the University of Michigan was the Vision Seminar honorable speaker for the month of January. He specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of inherited retinal degenerative diseases, including Stargardt disease, retinitis pigmentosa variants, cone dystrophies and unusual retinal dystrophies.

On Thursday October 19, 2017 the Vision Seminar Series was very pleased to host the guest speaker, Sayon Roy Ph.D., who is a world-renowned scientist in the field of diabetic retinopathy. Diabetic retinopathy remains leading cause for vision impairment in both developed and developing countries affecting over 600 million worldwide.

On Thursday September 21, 2017 the Vision Seminar Series was very pleased to host the guest speaker, Demetrious Vavvas M.D., Ph.D., who is a world-renowned retina surgeon and a clinician-scientist. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) remains the leading cause of blindness in developed countries, and affects more than 150 million worldwide.

June's honorable guest speaker was Dr. Emily Chew, a world-renowned medical retina expert. Dr. Chew is the deputy director of the Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Applications and the deputy clinical director at the National Eye Institute (NEI), National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The Vision Seminar Series debut on Thursday, May 18, 2017 was the first mini-symposia with speakers who presented their research at the annual 2017 ARVO (Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology) meeting, which was held in Baltimore, USA. The topics ranged from basic to clinical and educational science and were presented by post-doctoral research fellows and medical students.

The Vision Seminar was very pleased to host Jeffrey S. Heier, M.D., the Co-President and Medical Director, Director of the Vitreoretinal Service, and Director of Retina Research at Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston (OCB), as the honorable guest speaker for March.

On Thursday February 16, 2017 the Vision Seminar Series was very pleased to host its first international guest speaker, Shadi Safuri M.D., Ph.D., who is currently an ophthalmology resident at the at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel. Dr. Safuri came to UMass to complete an Advanced Ocular Imaging Rotation within the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the Eye Center at UMass Memorial Healthcare.

On Thursday January 19, 2017 Dr. Hemant Khanna highlighted critical roadblocks in designing gene augmentation therapy for X-linked retinal degeneration due to RPGR mutations. He also provided insights into developing novel therapeutic molecules for treating childhood blindness disorder Leber congenital amaurosis due to CEP290 mutations. Dr. Khanna’s lecture is a part of the UMass Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences Vision Seminar Series.

November’s vision seminar attracted more than 50 people. The crowd was diverse, and included academic clinical and research faculty from the UMass Chan Medical School, as well as medical students, bioengineering students, research scholars and community ophthalmologists.

Dr. Manas Biswal from the University of Florida presented research on a new mouse model for age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The model, which increases oxidative stress in the retinal-pigmented epithelium (RPE) by loss of the Sod2 gene, develops some of the hallmarks of Age-related Macular degeneration and will allow for the screening of drugs that reduce oxidative stress in the retinal-pigmented epithelium.

On Thursday September 15, 2016 Dr. David Hinkle presented key novel finds associated with Drug/Vaccine induced Uveitis part of the UMass Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences Vision Seminar Series. The presentation was informative and enjoyable, which introduced interesting topics for discussion.

The Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the UMass Chan Medical School launches a NEW Vision Seminar Series that is open to the public inviting practicing ophthalmologists form the surrounding neighborhoods to share their experiences and knowledge with scientists and clinicians of the Department of Ophthalmology.