Working Together to Understand, Protect and Restore Vision
A University of Wisconsin–Madison team led by MERI RRF Daniel M. Albert Chair, Prof. Bikash Pattnaik, has developed a molecular therapy that restores vision in a mouse model of Leber congenital amaurosis type 16 (LCA16), a rare inherited childhood blindness with no currently approved treatment. How it works: Rather than editing DNA, the therapy uses …
Thank you to everyone who attended our 14th Annual Alice McPherson Lecture, as well as our guest lecturer for the event, Dr. Aaron Y. Lee (Arthur W. Stickle Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, WashU, St. Louis).
The latest InSights newsletter features articles on Dr. Donna Neumann’s work on the HSV-1 virus’s latency and activation cycle and Dr. Celia Bisbach’s work on projects targeting a variety of blinding diseases, as well as an announcement on an exciting donation that will support annual awards to MERI trainee researchers!
The McPherson Eye Research Institute is proud to announce that our Associate Director Kevin Eliceiri has been named the inaugural recipient of the Spencer Shorte Legacy Award, presented by the Association of Biomolecular Research Facilities and Core Technologies for Life Sciences. Eliceiri, Professor of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is …
BrightFocus Foundation’s Macular Degeneration Research program has awarded a two-year, $200,000 postdoctoral fellowship grant to Celia Bisbach, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for her innovative research in vision health. A summary of Dr. Bisbach’s project, “Targeting and Removing Harmful Proteins to Treat Wet AMD,” is below: We are developing a …
This year’s event kicked off on Saturday, March 14th. 2026 is our fifteenth year of Cycle for Sight! Our kickoff event was on Saturday, March 14th, at the Princeton Club West, where teams and individuals cycled in three spinning sessions and also walked the Club’s track. Cycle for Sight continues through April as teams and individuals exercise …
MERI-at-a-Glance 2026 Friday, February 13th, 2026; DeLuca Forum, Discovery Building Guest Speakers Kevin Eliceiri (Medical Physics; Biomedical Engineering; CQCI) “The ImageJ ecosystem: An open platform for biomedical image analysis” David Herzfeld (Neuroscience) “The cerebellar circuit computations underlying smooth pursuit eye movements” Abhishek Kumar (Cell and Regenerative Biology; CQCI) “Visible Hyperspectral Microscopy for Retinal Imaging” Rosa …
MERI member Prof. Donna Neumann (DOVS) has been awarded a five-year R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to support her project, “A chromatin loop controls the expression of anterograde transport genes during HSV-1.” This highly competitive award builds on preliminary research supported by a pilot grant …
We are pleased to share a newly published online article highlighting the work of McPherson Eye Research Institute member Randy Bartels. The article explores recent advances in quantum imaging and how this emerging approach could open a powerful new window into the nanoscale universe. Quantum imaging leverages the unique properties of light to reveal details that are difficult—or …
Tuesday, September 9th, 2025 – 3571 WIMR Tuesday, October 14th, 2025 – 1360 Biotech Tuesday, November 11th, 2025 – 3571 WIMR Tuesday, December 9th, 2025 – 1360 Biotech