Basic Science Research

Our research programs span from understanding the biology of vision, from corneal transparency to brain mechanisms of perception, to deciphering the mechanisms of diseases, infectious, inflammatory, traumatic, toxic, degenerative, and genetic, with the ultimate goal of developing effective strategies to prevent and reverse blinding conditions. Around 40 principal investigators, either scientists, clinicians, or both, team up to construct multidisciplinary programs supported by the Eye & Ear Foundation led philanthropies and federal funding (NIH, DOD, NSF, and more recently, the new ARPA-H agency). The regenerative medicine approaches (cell and gene therapy), as well as the vision restoration technologies (e.g., prosthetic vision, optogenetic, cortical stimulation), are brought to the clinic by our investigators, surgeons, and industrial partners. We also seek to better understand the impact of vision impairment and vision restoration in daily activities using naturalistic environments, such as the StreetLab and our driving simulator. Now among the top programs in the country, our fully integrated translational perspective has the ultimate goal of giving back our patients the joy of sight.