Dr. Michael Altaweel (Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences) has been awarded the Monroe E. Trout Chair in Vision Research, established by Dr. Monroe and Sandra Trout in 2020. The Monroe E. Trout Chair is the third endowed chair established by the Trouts in the McPherson Eye Research Institute, following on the Sandra Lemke Trout Chair (held by David Gamm, MD, PhD), and the Timothy William Trout Chair (held by Akihiro Ikeda, DVM, PhD). All three endowed chairholders focus on research intended to cure or develop effective new therapies for age-related macular degeneration.
The Monroe E. Trout Chair will allow Dr. Altaweel, a highly skilled retinal surgeon, to work to refine surgical techniques for subretinal stem cell delivery in an effective, safe, and reproducible manner. This will be accomplished through collaborations with UW-Madison colleagues, particularly Dr. Gamm (who grows the stem cell-derived replacement photoreceptors in his lab) and Drs. Sarah Gong, PhD, and Jack Ma, PhD, (whose labs have developed biodegradable scaffolds to contain the photoreceptors).
