Honoring the past, looking toward the future

What an exciting year 2025 has been for the UCI Health Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, as we marked the half-century anniversary of the ophthalmology department at UC Irvine and the 60th year of our university!

Topping off a truly remarkable year, we received a transformative $15 million gift from the Brunson Foundation to support our Center for Translational Vision Research, which is dedicated to finding treatments and cures for blinding diseases.

In May, the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building officially opened adjacent to the eye institute on the Irvine campus. On its top floor, 30,000 square feet of state-of-the-art lab and office space is the new home of the translational vision research center and our Program in Precision Genome Editing, both under the leadership of Krzysztof Palczewski, PhD, the Irving H. Leopold Chair of Ophthalmology and Distinguished Professor. In recognition of the Brunson Foundation’s incredible generosity, the research center and its new lab and office space will be named in honor of its founder, the late Robert M. Brunson.

In September, we celebrated the Falling Leaves Foundation building’s opening with an academic symposium featuring eight speakers, including three Nobel Prize winners. “Breaking Barriers: Trailblazing Innovations in Medical Research,” included lectures by Stefan Hell, the 2014 Nobel Laureate in chemistry; Gregg L. Semenza, the 2019 Nobel Laureate in physiology or medicine; and Thomas C. Südhof, the 2013 Nobel Laureate in physiology or medicine. We were honored to host these world-renowned researchers at the event attended by many leaders, physicians and scientists from across the university.

We are continuing to recruit new faculty. We recently made two key hires. Neuro-ophthalmologist Kimberly Gokoffski, MD, PhD, joins us from the Keck School of Medicine at USC. A leading vision scientist, Gokoffski is working on several audacious projects, including one that involves transplants of an entire human eye. We’re thrilled to have her treating patients at the eye institute as well as conducting research in the Brunson Center for Translational Vision Research.

We also welcomed comprehensive ophthalmologist Farnoosh Tinoosh, MD, who is seeing patients at our new satellite location in Brea. That office — the first of what we expect will be several more locations throughout Orange County — opens its doors this fall. We’re excited that he is providing vision services for our patients in North Orange County, along with a number of our ophthalmologists who will be offering care in a variety of subspecialities.

These new clinicians are joining a truly prestigious group of scientists and vision care providers who continue to impress and inspire. Several of them have received major honors this year. I’m proud to share that Annabelle Storch, OD, was named Young Optometrist of the Year — a national distinction awarded annually by the American Optometrist Association to just one U.S. provider. To be nominated, she first won the state of California’s Young Optometrist of the Year title. This is a well-deserved recognition of her service to patients at the eye institute, her work with the UCI Health Eye Mobile for Children and to the professional community.

In June, Audrey Lapinaite, PhD, received the Athalie R. Clark Achievement Award for Medical Research, in recognition of the lasting impact of her vision research on human health. It was presented at the annual awards ceremony luncheon hosted by the UC Irvine Research Associates. Also in June, I was humbled to receive the Roger Steinert, MD Legacy Award at Octane OC’s Ophthalmology Tech Forum. 

As we look toward the holiday season and the year’s end, I am deeply grateful for the unwavering support and trust of our campus leaders, our faculty members and staff, our community and, most importantly, our patients. Together, our future truly is brilliant.