All May See Foundation Announces $300,000 in New Faculty Awards

All May See Foundation is pleased to announce the following new faculty awards, approved at its October 2023 Board meeting, to the UCSF Department of Ophthalmology, recipients included:

Cathy Sun, MD, for – Planning a Registry-based Pragmatic Randomized controlled trial for Glaucoma
Contributing Faculty: Stephen McLeod, MD, (Chief Executive Officer, American Academy of Ophthalmology), Travis Porco, PhD, MPH, (UCSF) Kieran O’Brien, PhD, MPH (UCSF), Gus Gazzard, MBBChir, MA, FRCOphth, MD, (Moorfields Eye Hospital)

O’Rese J. Knight, MD, for – Development of a 24-hr Intraocular Pressure Monitor
Contributing Faculty: Noel Ziebarth, PhD (University Miami), Herbert DeSmet, PhD (Ghent University), Alfonso Sabater, PhD (University of Miami), Peter Pinsky, PhD (Stanford University emeritus)

Douglas Gould, PhD, for – Generating mice with genetically tagged alleles of type IV collagen isoforms

Vinod Reddy Lekkala, PhD, for – Driving maturation of photoreceptors in early-stage retinal organoids via CRISPR activation (Supervisor: Deepak Lamba, MBBS, PhD)

An Cheng, PhD, for – Mechanisms of FOXO3 dysfunction and its relevance to retinal pigment epithelium injury in Stargardt disease (Supervisor: Aparna Lakkaraju, PhD)

Victoria Zhao, PhD, for – Mechanisms Underlying Retinal Ganglion Cell Subtype-specific Resiliency in Glaucomatous Optic Neuropathy (Supervisor: Xin Duan, PhD)

Projects were selected through a competitive peer-review process where faculty propose new research and the top-rated proposals are awarded “kick-starter” funding to get their projects up and running.

The Foundation’s goal is that these awards will enable recipients to generate data that will support larger scale proposals, leveraging the funds to generate additional external federal and private support. Our objective is to hasten scientific breakthroughs in diseases of the eye – here and around the world.

All May See Foundation is committed to saving and restoring sight and inspiring hope that, one day, all may see.