UW Eye Research Institute
Case Statement (PDF)
Scientific, medical and societal challenges require novel collaborations among
experts from diverse disciplines that transcend the conventional boundaries of
departments and schools. These collaborations also establish bridges between the
university and relevant portions of the private sector.
Diseases know no geographical or administrative boundaries and neither should their solutions. In response, the University of Wisconsin has been a pioneer in establishing interdisciplinary institutes and centers to grapple with difficult problems. The UW Eye Research Institute is one of the newest endeavors to bring together widely different disciplines. Institute members are committed to the development of new knowledge, the advancement of new technologies, and the rapid application of innovative approaches to significant healthcare issues.
Solutions for blinding diseases and related neurological disorders require partnerships between an assortment of scientists, from biochemists and neuroscientists to computational scientists and engineers. This community of scholars embraces emerging scientific disciplines as well as the visual arts, recognizing that visual perception, both during the processing of normal cues as well as confounding optical and perceptual illusions, provides important clues about the organization and dysfunctions of the brain. In turn, advancements in the vision sciences will enhance knowledge in other areas of science and medicine. For example, the study of photoreception—how the eye processes light energy—is illustrative of more ubiquitous processes in biology which incorporate hormone and neurotransmitter action and provide the framework for intervening with drugs in disparate human diseases.
Moving from molecules to complex cellular pathways, the primate visual cortex is the best-characterized part of the brain. Its anatomy and physiology provide the context by which other areas of the brain are studied, leading us towards an understanding of the physiological basis of human perception—that is, how we think.
The UW Eye Research Institute provides a new forum in which faculty and students can pose their most difficult questions and distill their best ideas.