Ophthalmology Department says Farewell as Samuel Leeman Moves on to Medical School

Samuel Leeman bids farewell this week after serving for 3 years with the department of ophthalmology and visual sciences at UMass Chan Medical School.

Sam came to UMASS in 2018 to develop a new scribing program in the ophthalmology department. Contributing to the rapidly expanding department, he worked directly with several subspecialist ophthalmologists on a regular basis, including medical retina, uveitis and oculoplastics. As a scribe, Sam assisted in many aspects of patient's visits and the electronic medical record while gaining a strong foundation of clinical ophthalmology knowledge.

During this time, Sam continued to work with Dr. Shlomit Schaal on clinical research projects and conducted several image analysis studies looking at vasculature changes in the retina from different diseases like stroke, sleep apnea, and pre-eclampsia. He also completed an analysis of the pilot scribe program and the implementation of LEAN principles in the clinic. Sam had multiple abstracts accepted to the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), the largest annual international ophthalmology conference, and attended the 2019 conference in Vancouver, BC, to present some of his research, winning the "hot topic" award. Sam's work on a novel image analysis quantifying the retinal toxicity of Pentosan Polysulfate Sodium (Elmiron), alongside Dr. Omar Helmy, Dr. Aviel Hadad and Dr. Shlomit Schaal, led to a publication in Ophthalmology, the field's leading scientific journal, and invitations to the American Academy of Ophthalmology Annual Conference in San Francisco and to the Annual Retina Society Meeting in London. Sam also presented his work to engaged audiences at UMASS during the department's vision seminar series.

As Sam transitioned in 2019 to become a full-time clinical research coordinator, he began overseeing all the medical students who were assisting with the department's research and coordinated our interdepartmental collaborative image analysis studies with Neurology and OBGYN. He became the go-to resource in the department for attaining Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval and setting up study infrastructure. When Dr. Haijiang Lin started participating as a PI in industry sponsored multi-site clinical trials investigating age-related macular degeneration and diabetic macular edema, Sam took on the responsibility of coordinating these clinical trials. Sam handled all the necessary institutional approvals and contracts, certifying our technicians and photographers, recruiting patients and carrying out each of their study visits accurately by the protocol.

Additionally, Sam was involved in various industrial collaborations with Dr. Juan Ding, including working with a company on a device to improve the treatment of amblyopia in children, applying for an NIH Federal STTR grant through the small business association, and working with an Israeli company (AEYE Health) on artificial intelligence algorithms to automatically interpret fundus imaging for diabetic retinopathy screening, where he applied for and won a grant worth $800,000 from the Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) foundation to better our care of patients with diabetes using cutting edge technology. Sam's accomplishments went beyond the walls of UMASS, where he volunteered with the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (MABVI) and was introduced to Liz Myska, a community advocate for the visually impaired. Together, they applied for and won a $10,000 educational grant from the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) to design a series of events aimed at educating our department and the medical school community on the disparities and daily challenges of the visually impaired, the first of which occurred in August 2020.

During Sam's time with UMASS, the department of ophthalmology has been among the fastest growing departments at UMASS, now with the highest research funding of all UMASS surgical departments and winning Innovators of the Year twice in three years. With great mentorship from Dr. Shlomit Schaal and all the department's faculty, Sam managed to have a widespread impact. We thank him for his contributions and wish him all the best as he continues on to start medical school this summer.