Message from The Chair - Spring Celebrations

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of California, Irvine. As our institution has grown in international recognition and acclaim, so has our department, which was founded when the Irvine campus was just 10 years old.

In 1975, UC Irvine School of Medicine Dean Dr. Stanley van den Noort and Gavin Herbert, founder of the Allergan pharmaceutical company, pulled off a remarkable feat. They convinced the world’s leading expert on ocular pharmacology to leave his prestigious post as chair of the ophthalmology department at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine to come to the fledgling Irvine campus. As the founding chair of the UC Irvine Department of Ophthalmology, Dr. Irving H. Leopold laid a foundation of excellence and innovation that we have continued to build upon for the last five decades.

Today, we provide world-class vision research, teaching and unequaled patient eye care in Orange County. In 2024 alone, our UCI Health Gavin Herbert Eye Institute posted more than 95,000 patient visits and provided more 5,000 eye surgeries. This year, we will continue to expand our clinical team and facilities to treat even more patients.

Our research enterprise is thriving, as well. Today, Krzysztof Palczewski, PhD, who is the Irving H. Leopold Chair of Ophthalmology and Distinguished Professor, continues our founder’s legacy of innovation. When the Falling Leaves Foundation Medical Innovation Building opens this spring across from the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute on the Irvine campus, the entire fifth floor will be dedicated to groundbreaking research at the Center for Translational Vision Research and the Genome Editing Research Program, both led by Palczewski.

Celebrations this fall will mark the opening of the medical innovation facility. Among the festivities, which serendipitously aligns with our department’s 50th anniversary, will be an academic symposium featuring lectures by three Nobel laureates. This convergence of great minds will certainly set the tone for game-changing and inspired research projects expected to take place in the foundation building.

I’m also delighted to report that ophthalmology and biomedical engineering faculty member James V. Jester, PhD, the Jack H. Skirball Endowed Chair earned the title Distinguished Professor — an honor reserved for those who have achieved the highest levels of scholarship — and it is a testament to his professional longevity and research productivity. Jester’s current work focuses on treating corneal thinning, astigmatism and refractive errors with a laser technique called nonlinear optical corneal collagen crosslinking. Additionally, he is researching the function of the meibomian gland to better understand its role in evaporative dry eye disease, which affects so many of our patients.

We are pleased to welcome Amy Hellem, PhD, as the new director of the National Keratoconus Foundation. Hellem, who previously served as editor-in-chief of the Review of Optometry, brings extensive experience in science communications to the national nonprofit, which is housed in our department. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the foundation’s previous director, Mary Prudden, JD, for her excellent stewardship of the organization. We wish her the best in her retirement.

Currently, we are in the final stages of recruiting two new faculty members: one in visual neurosciences, the other in genome editing. We look forward to welcoming them to our campus in the fall.

As the Department of Ophthalmology marks its anniversary, we have many visionary leaders on campus and in the community to thank for our growth. They — along with our dedicated clinicians and staff members — have created an institution that our university and our community can be proud of. Most important, we have served countless patients over the last half century who entrusted us with one of their most treasured resources: their vision. We appreciate and celebrate them all, as we look forward to our next 50 years.