The Organization of the Retina and Visual System
The University of Utah Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences invites applications for a full-time position at the level of Assistant/Associate Professor (commensurate w/experience) in the field of visual system function and or/disease. Successful candidates are expected to establish a strong research program funded by federal sources (NIH, NSF), to strengthen the current research carried out at the Moran Eye Institute as well as bring new areas of research into focus.
The Moran Eye Center travels globally as one of their missions for International Outreach and provides eye care in remote places around the world that are medically underserved from an ophthalmology perspective.
This is a short video showing the Moran Eye Center setting up an eyecamp in Salma, Guatemala on Dec. 9th. This includes moving furniture at the detination, cleaning, and setting up surgical equipment, operating tables, microscopes, and other allied equipment. This effort involves months of planning and ultimately the goal is to improve or restore vision in over 250 patients who travel from all over Guatemala to receive free care.
Our colleague and Director of Research at the University of Utah‘s Moran Eye Center, Robert E. Marc, Ph.D. has been named by the International Society for Eye Research as a recipient of the Paul Kayser International Award in Retina Research. The award will be presented to Dr. Marc during the 2014 ISER Biennial Meeting of the Society for Eye Research in San Francisco, California on Thursday, July 24th, 2014.
The Paul Kayser International Award in Retina Research was created by the Directors of Retina Research Foundation and endowed by the Trustees of The Kayser Foundation to honor and perpetuate the memory of long-time friend and dedicated benefactor of RRF, Paul Kayser. Through this award both organizations are demonstrating the conviction they shared with Mr. Kayser that blindness caused by retinal disease is a global concern and must be addressed accordingly. It is thus the purpose of this award to foster greater awareness of the need for intensive study of the retina, its role in the visual process, and the retinal diseases that threaten and/or destroy eyesight by recognizing outstanding achievement and sustaining meritorious scientific investigations worldwide.
Dr. Marc was chosen as the recipient of this award for his lifetime body of work in retinal research, discovering the structure and function of the retina through novel technologies and approaches that have pushed our understanding of the retina forward.
This photo (enlarged image) shows peripheral vasculitis in a patient with Acute Zonal Occult Outer Retinopathy (AZOOR).
Five images were taken in each eye and composited together to show the peripheral changes taking place in the mid arterivenous phase of the fluorescein angiogram.
This image was made by James Gilman of the Moran Eye Center using a 102 degree non-contact wide angle lens on a Heidelberg Spectralis.
We mentioned some of the outreach work that the Moran Eye Center does a few posts ago. There is now a documentary, Duk County (trailer linked in the above video) about the humanitarian expedition to South Sudan to restore vision to those who have lost it through cataracts and trachoma mediated blindness. There is also a link and article from National Geographic Adventure Blog here.
The Moran Eye Center‘s first eye intervention in South Sudan is documented in that film, but our Alan S. Crandall, MD, and Dr. Charles Weber, MD, recently completed a second major ophthalmic medical mission to South Sudan. As part of a life-changing five-year initiative, the team once again traveled to the war-torn region to provide eye surgeries to the visually impaired with a small medical team, carrying in every single supply, from Q-tips to microscopes. Through the efforts of Drs. Crandall and Weber, they helped restore sight to 325 patients with cataracts and trachoma.
After finding cataracts far more advanced than expected on their 2011 mission, the team returned in 2012 with a hand-held ultrasound machine that allows them to see into the back of the eye no matter how opaque the front of the eye is during the initial screening. “The clinic in South Sudan is quite bare, but we are able to bring all the supplies we need in order to successfully operate on patients. Last year, we operated as bats flew around our heads and relied on a generator that didn’t always work. Fortunately, there is a new operating room that better suits the needs of the patients,” said Crandall. Continue reading “Duk County And Moran Eye Center Outreach At Home And Abroad”
Choroidal neoplasms are tumors of the choroid of the eye. The most common intraocular tumors are in fact, malignant melanomas of the choroid which increase in frequency as we age. Continue reading “Choroidal Neoplasm”
The National Institutes of Health has awarded prizes for audacious ideas in vision research to a number of investigators including our own Dr. Yingbin Fu at the Moran Eye Center.
A researcher at the John A. Moran Eye Center has been selected as one of 10 winners by the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
Yingbin Fu, a Moran researcher and assistant professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the University of Utah, is one of 10 winners of the Audacious Goals Challenge, a nationwide competition for compelling ideas to advance vision and science. Continue reading “NIH Competition Awards Prizes For Audacious Ideas In Vision Research”
This image for the Art of Vision category was made by James Gilman of the Moran Eye Center is an artistic rendering created from a fundoscopic of a normal human retina and retinal vasculature.
Here on Webvision, our goal is retinal education and even though Webvision is hosted here at the Moran Eye Center, we nevertheless try to include as much of the wider community as possible in posts and in content, though we will point out work that comes of of the Moran Eye Center from time to time. So, while we compiling chapters for information as well as posts to the front page here that we hope contain informative items relevant to the retina and the retinal research community, it is important from time to time to step back and ask why it is that we study the retina and get a bigger picture view of what role all of this biology plays in peoples lives.
Grand Rounds for today is an interesting finding of an anomalous congenital blood vessel that crosses the front of a pupil, relaxing when the pupil is small, and pulling taut when the pupil becomes is dilated. The image above is relaxed with a small pupil.
Continue reading “Congenital Iris Vessel Crossing The Pupil”
The Moran Eye Center‘s Dr. Gregory Hageman delivered a Congressional Briefing on September 20th along with the Alliance for Eye and Vision Research (AEVR) and partners AMD Alliance International, Alliance for Aging Research, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), European Vision Institute and Lighthouse International. Dr. Hageman spoke as part of a Congressional briefing as part of International Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) Awareness Week 2012.
Dr. Gregory Hageman, Executive Director of the Center for Translational Medicine (CTM) at the John A. Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah related in his address that AMD consists of multiple biological diseases. Dr. Hageman continued by expressing that a convergence of clinical, biological and genetic data has led to a stronger understanding of the disease and new hope for the development of diagnostics and therapeutic interventions currently underway.
More details of the briefing are available on the NAEVR website here.
This poster and presentation was presented today at the Federation of American Societies For Experimental Biology (FASEB) meeting in Steamboat Springs, Colorado by J. Scott Lauritzen, James R. Anderson, Carl B. Watt, Bryan W. Jones and Robert E. Marc. A large size pdf of the poster can be downloaded here.
Continue reading “Connectomics Analysis of Rod-Cone Interaction Networks”
We are on our way to ARVO, 2012! ARVO is an annual meeting of researchers and clinicians who’s focus is on the visual system.
As happened last year, over the next few days, you will see some of our research abstracts appear on Webvision as the presentations are completed at ARVO. We hope that it will provide an insight into some of the work that goes on here at the Moran Eye Center as well as our commitment to understand the basic science of vision and cure blinding diseases.
If you are going to be at ARVO and want to meet up, leave us a comment here or send a Tweet to @BWJones. We might even be able to work you into the Moran social on Monday the 7th…
Look forward to seeing you there.
Image credit: Bryan William Jones, Ph.D.
This is a patient with Map-dot-fingerprint dystrophy, otherwise known as Cogan’s dystrophy. Continue reading “Map-Dot Fingerprint Dystrophy”
The image that is used for the avatar here on Webvision has been awarded first place in the journal Science and the National Science Foundation‘s Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for 2011 (video with interviews here).
Continue reading “Metabolomic Eye Wins Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge”