Nahyoung (Grace) Lee, MD, associate professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, is one of the 2021 honorees for the Anne Klibanski Visiting Scholars Award. This award—given through The Mass General Center for Faculty Development—provides an opportunity for Dr. Lee to serve as a "virtual" Visiting Professor to give Grand Rounds at a national or international institution, organized by the Center for Faculty Development. This award is presented to women faculty clinicians, educators, researchers, and postdoctoral fellows who have demonstrated exceptional promise as leaders in their fields and whose careers would benefit from both national and international mentoring and networking opportunities.
Dr. Lee joined the department in 2011 as a clinical research fellow in Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. During this fellowship, she received the Association for University Professors of Ophthalmology research award for her research in gene expression in non-specific orbital inflammation. Dr. Lee went on to complete a two-year Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Fellowship at Mass Eye and Ear and received the prestigious Heed Ophthalmic Foundation Fellowship Award and the Fellow of the Year teaching award. She joined the department full time in 2011 as a member of the Mass Eye and Ear Ophthalmic Plastic Surgery Service.
Dr. Lee's clinical expertise is in Asian eyelid surgery, ocular oncology, and ophthalmic pathology. She is a member of the Harvard Ophthalmology Ocular Oncology Center of Excellence and her research focuses orbital disease and tumors as well as thyroid eye disease—particularly in the study of the potential role of vasculogenesis in thyroid eye disease.
Dr. Lee plans to present on an innovative new use of artificial intelligence in ophthalmology. She is currently using machine learning to help to diagnose patients with thyroid eye disease by comparing scans of patients with this condition to controls and eliciting which patients could be at risk for vision loss from optic neuropathy.