Jennifer K. Sun, MD, MPH to Receive Young Investigator Award

November 3, 2020

Dr. Jennifer K. SunFaculty member Jennifer K. Sun, MD, MPH, has been selected by the Macula Society to receive the 2021 Young Investigator Award. This prestigious honor is awarded to an individual under 50 years of age whose work gives high promise of a notable advance in the clinical treatment of disorders of the eye. Dr. Sun will receive the Young Investigator Award at the 44th Macula Society Annual Meeting in February, 2021.

Dr. Sun is an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Center for Clinical Eye Research and Trials at the Beetham Eye Institute at Joslin Diabetes Center. She also serves as the Chair of Diabetes Initiatives for the Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research (DRCR) Retina Network.

An accomplished vitreoretinal surgeon and researcher, Dr. Sun is known internationally for her research on diabetic retinopathy. Her primary areas of interest involve advanced, noninvasive ocular imaging, as well as state-of-the-art design and implementation of clinical trials for diabetic retinopathy.

Dr. Sun has chaired five nationwide, multicenter studies addressing new treatments and methods of evaluation for diabetic eye disease. These include the DME FOUND Study, which evaluated the use of point-of-care noninvasive retinal imaging at primary diabetes care visits to identify patients at risk for vision loss from diabetic macular edema, as well as a phase 1 trial of an intravitreous plasma kallikrein inhibitor for diabetic macular edema. She also served as the initial nationwide Protocol Chair for both the DRCR.net Ultrawide Field Imaging Study and the DRCR.net Prevention of Vision Threatening Complications in Eyes at High Risk through Anti-VEGF Treatment Study.

Dr. Sun lectures nationally and internationally, and is a past recipient of the ARVO/Alcon Early Career Clinician-Scientist Research Award, the Research to Prevent Blindness Physician-Scientist Award, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Mary Tyler Moore and S. Robert Levine, MD Excellence in Clinical Research Award.