The Department of Ophthalmology was well represented at this year’s Association for Research and Vision in Ophthalmology (ARVO) Annual Meeting, held April 22 through May 2 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
More than 160 faculty and trainees participated as course instructors, panelists, lecturers and more, with several Mass. Eye and Ear faculty, trainees and alumni receiving honors and awards.
Rosario Fernandez-Godino Receives Research Fellowship Award
Rosario Fernandez-Godino, PhD, MSc, a Harvard Medical School Instructor in Ophthalmology and an Investigator in the Harvard Ophthalmology Ocular Genomics Institute, received the Genentech Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) Research Fellowship. The award, presented by the ARVO Foundation for Eye Research and supported by Genentech, will provide $40,000 to support Dr. Fernandez-Godino’s translational AMD research.
Mary Whitman Recognized with ARVO/Alcon Early Career Clinician Scientist Research Award
Mary C. Whitman, MD, PhD, Instructor in Ophthalmology and received the ARVO/Alcon Early Career Clinician-Scientist Research Award for her research on rare DNA duplications associated with esotropia. This award, established in 2006, supports researchers who are committed to careers as clinician scientists.
Konstantina Sampani Receives Fellowship
Konstantina Sampani, MD, a clinical research fellow at Beetham Eye Institute at Joslin Diabetes Center, received ARVO's Science Communications Training Fellowship. The one-year program—awarded to just 20 ARVO members—trains young scientists to become more effective communicators of vision research to all audiences.
Saghar Bagheri Participates in Poster Award Competition
Saghar Bagheri, a clinical research fellow at Mass. Eye and Ear, represented Harvard Ophthalmology at the Members-in-Training Outstanding Poster Award Competition. Dr. Bagheri, who works under the mentorship of Demetrios Vavvas, MD, PhD, received one of the top-five scored abstracts in the retina section for her work entitled, "Anti-VEGF non-responders are often short-term responders."
Additionally, Dr. Bagheri received an American Macular Degeneration Foundation Travel Grant from ARVO. . She is one of 12 Harvard Ophthalmology trainees who received ARVO travel grants View all of our travel grant recipients.
Alumnus Presents the Friedenwald Award Lecture
Donald Zack, MD, PhD, Harvard Ophthalmology alumnus (class of '88), presented the Friedenwald Award Lecture. His talk highlighted his work to identify lead molecules for the development of new treatments for retinal neurodegenerative diseases, including age-related degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, and glaucoma.
Save the Date for ARVO 2020
The 2020 Annual Meeting will be held May 3-7 in Baltimore. Lloyd Paul Aiello, MD, PhD, Director of the Beetham Eye Institute at Joslin Diabetes Center, will present next year’s Friedenwald Award Lecture. And alumnus Paul Bernstein was selected to present the Weisenfeld Award Lecture.