Resident and Fellow Research Forum

Benton Chuter, MD, MS
Hamilton Eye Institute - University of Tennessee Health Science
Center

Benton Chuter is a pre-residency glaucoma research fellow at the Hamilton Eye Institute (HEI) of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and pursued his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Stanford University, studying biology and mechanical engineering while also racing in the top eight for Stanford’s varsity rowing team. After working as a consultant in medical device design, he completed his medical degree at the University of California San Diego. Now at HEI, he brings over a decade of research experience and expertise in engineering, medicine, and AI. Leading a team in Dr. Monica Jablonski’s lab, he develops and applies novel deep learning-based tools to assess measures of optic nerve health. Benton is one of the first to use deep learning to quantify the effect of a pharmaceutical agent on optic nerve morphology. Also a proud father, he considers his son to be his greatest invention yet. As an aspiring ophthalmologist, Benton hopes to continue integrating his academic, engineering, and clinical interests to improve and broaden access to ophthalmologic care.

Rahul Dhodapkar, MD
University of Southern California School of Medicine

I am a dedicated resident physician in ophthalmology at the University of Southern California with expertise in complex computational modeling of molecular genetics and diagnostic imaging data. As a former core software engineer at MongoDB (a leading database technology), I also have expertise in the management and manipulation of large datasets. My previous work includes developing new approaches for the analysis of single-cell data based on large language models with a focus on cross-species applications (e.g. determining the applicability of insights derived in non-human model systems to human vision) as well as perturbation prediction (e.g. predicting the effect of a new drug or genetic manipulation in a never-before-seen context in silico). I have also authored work applying state-of-the-art computer vision techniques to perform automated quality control of OCTA images. Aligned with my goal of becoming a physician-scientist in our field, I remain focused on developing new techniques for the application of artificial intelligence to improve both the clinical practice of ophthalmology and the basic science that drives our understanding of ophthalmic pathology. I am excited to present our work on automated measurement of strabismus using computer vision techniques at the research forum this year.

Blake Hauser, MD, PhD
Mass Eye and Ear - Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology

Blake Hauser, MD, PhD, is currently a PGY-2 resident in ophthalmology at Mass Eye and Ear. She graduated from the Health Sciences and Technology track at Harvard Medical School while also earning a PhD in Biophysics through the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program. Her doctoral work focused on protein engineering and structural virology, and this was funded by an NIH F30 grant award. She has a longstanding research interest in understanding the molecular basis of human disease, which she first pursued as a Morehead-Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later as a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge. Blake has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers and earned multiple awards including the Dr. John D. and Gretchen H. Bullock Ophthalmology Award and the Soma Weiss Award for Excellence in Research from Harvard Medical School. Currently, she works with Elizabeth Rossin, MD, PhD, on leveraging analysis of protein structures to obtain increased insight into the genetic basis of inherited retinal diseases, in parallel with her clinical training in ophthalmology. She aspires to a career as an academic surgeon-scientist, helping to preserve patients’ vision while simultaneously advancing scientific understanding of vision-threatening processes.

Vincent (Runzhe) Xu

Vincent (Runzhe) Xu is a second-year MD/PhD student at UT Southwestern. He grew up in Nanjing, China, and attended UCLA for college, where he graduated summa cum laude with BSc in Biochemistry and Neuroscience. During and after his undergraduate studies, he conducted neuroscience research under the mentorship of HHMI Investigator Dr. Larry Zipursky. His work elucidated novel roles of vision in regulating mammalian visual cortex development by leveraging high-throughput single-cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics. His research has led to multiple publications in high-impact journals, including Cell, Nature, and Cancer Cell, as well as a first-author publication in PNAS. With a growing interest in vision science and the emerging field of cancer neuroscience, he subsequently joined the UT Southwestern MSTP program and began research under the mentorship of Dr. William J. Harbour to investigate the biological underpinnings of intraocular tumorigenesis. His recent work focuses on dissecting the molecular heterogeneity of human retinoblastoma and identifying conserved transcriptional programs associated with tumor malignancy and treatment response by integrating high-throughput omics and bioinformatics. Vincent plans to pursue residency training in ophthalmology and aspires to become a physician-scientist who bridges clinical care and laboratory research to develop new treatments for sight-threatening diseases.

Kristin Ates Hicks, MD, PhD
University of Florida

Kristin Ates Hicks is a current ophthalmology resident at the University of Florida. Kristin’s clinical and research interests began early during her undergraduate education at Tulane University, where she obtained a double major in both Cell & Molecular Biology and Neuroscience.  She knew she not only wanted to serve patients as a future physician, but she wanted to contribute more to the translational research field. Thus, she pursued her graduate training with the Medical College of Georgia’s combined MD/PhD program. She obtained a PhD in Neuroscience under the mentorship of Y. Albert Pan, PhD during which she collaborated with the NIH’s Undiagnosed Diseases Program. Kristin continued her research endeavors at the University of Florida, where she worked closely with W. Clay Smith, PhD in the investigation of a gene-agnostic tool in an effort to stop or slow the rate of retinal degeneration in inherited retinal diseases (IRDs). Kristin has received multiple awards for her research endeavors throughout her training career. She considers herself very fortunate to have had incredible mentors throughout her journey. Kristin aspires to provide exemplary care to her future patients and to contribute more to the advancement of knowledge in ophthalmology in her career.

Whitney Stuard Sambhariya, MD, PHD
Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute

Whitney Sambhariya is an ophthalmology resident at the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was born in Dallas, Texas and attended UT Southwestern Medical School. At UT Southwestern she participated in the Medical Scientist Training Program (MD/PhD) receiving her PhD in cell and molecular biology. She was awarded the Ho Din Award, the school's highest honor. She is currently working on retinal ganglion cell transplantation to restore vision in glaucoma and optic neuropathy in Dr. Thomas Johnson's Laboratory. Whitney has co-authored over 20 peer-reviewed papers, including JAMA Ophthalmology, J Biol Chem, FASEB, PLoS One, and IOVS. Whitney has received a variety of awards for her research and leadership including the Tylenol Healthy Futures Award, PEO Scholar, Wilmer Mitchel Prize, NAEVR’s Emerging Vision Scientist Program, as well as a F30 NIH grant. Whitney is avidly involved in advocacy, having written over 40 policies for medical societies. She sits on multiple boards including the AMA Foundation and Maryland State Medical Society Board of Trustees. Whitney’s motivation to care for patients and push the boundaries of medicine will fulfill her drive to become a physician-scientist. As a physician-scientist, she hopes to have the opportunity to effect change not just to society’s current state, but also its future. She hopes to mold this interest, through both laboratory and clinical experiences, to make contributions to restoring sight to those who have lost it.

Andrew Voigt, MD, PhD
Northwestern University

Drew Voigt is a second-year resident in the Department of Ophthalmology at Northwestern University. He attended St. Olaf College in Minnesota, where he played NCAA Division III soccer, before pursuing an MD/PhD at the University of Iowa. In his graduate research under the mentorship Dr. Robert Mullins, he performed the first single-cell RNA sequencing studies on human post-mortem donor choroid and identified gene expression changes in choroidal endothelial cells during normal aging and age-related macular degeneration. He is currently a research-track resident at Northwestern University, and his post-doctoral research with Dr. Jeremy Lavine investigates how macrophages promote pathologic neovascularization in wet macular degeneration. His research often incorporates bioinformatics and high-performance computing to better understand mechanisms of disease. Drew won the D.C. Spriestersbach Prize for the top research thesis at University of Iowa and has co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications. He aspires to be an NIH-funded physician scientist who investigates genetic retinal diseases and their treatments.

Seyedeh (Maryam) Zekavat, MD, PhD
Harvard Medical School

Seyedeh (Maryam) Zekavat, MD, PhD received her BSc in Biological Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Supported by an MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives Grant, she studied at Roche in Switzerland where she developed a computational model of retinal cholesterol dynamics to model drusen development in dry age-related macular degeneration. After graduation, she worked at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as a Computational Biologist, using diverse computational and bioinformatics tools to study inherited genetic causes of blood lipid variation and myocardial infarction in humans. As an MD/PhD student at Yale, Dr. Zekavat studied the phenotypic consequences of acquired hematopoietic somatic variants, identifying significant associations between clonal hematopoiesis and infections, including severe COVID-19. Now as an Ophthalmology resident at Mass Eye and Ear, Dr. Zekavat is applying her prior experiences with big-data analytics in genomics, phenomics, and imaging towards Ophthalmology. Combining retinal imaging, systemic phenotypes, and genotypes using deep learning and other analytical methods among thousands of individuals, she has linked retinal imaging features with genomics, metabolomics, and with future risk of systemic and ocular phenotypes. She aspires to be a physician-scientist in Ophthalmology, applying Computational Biology and Bioinformatics towards ‘omics datasets to improve understanding of the link between the retina and systemic health, and also improve diagnostics and treatments for both ocular and systemic conditions.

Nominees for the Resident and Fellow Research Forum must fulfill the following criteria:

• Ophthalmology residents in accredited programs in the United States or Canada or clinical fellows in AUPO FCC compliant or ASOPRS programs carrying out research on a full or part time basis. Medical students doing a full year of research are also eligible.
• Research content should reflect ongoing or very recent research that has not yet been published or accepted for publication at the time of submission.
• Applications across the full spectrum of ophthalmic diseases are encouraged.
• A winning presenter is eligible to present only once at an AUPO annual meeting.

• Candidates must be nominated by their Department Chair
• The Application Packet must include the following items (10 pt. font or greater):
  • A letter (not to exceed two pages) from the Chair summarizing the Nominee’s special qualifications for the Award and verifying
    • the percent of ‘hands-on’ effort by the candidate described in the abstract
    • the cash prize will be awarded directly to the Awardee and not counted against normal compensation or deposited in department accounts
    • the Awardee will attend the AUPO Annual Meeting to receive the award and will be accompanied by the Chair or another Member from their department
  • One-page curriculum vitae
  • Abstract of research carried out by candidate
    • abstracts should indicate the percent of “hands-on” effort of the work performed by the candidate
    • abstracts should be in ARVO format
    • the introduction should contain a single sentence statement of the hypothesis
    • the conclusion should contain a single sentence statement of the relevance of the work to the prevention of blindness (why the study is therefore important)
• No candidate may submit more than one abstract, although there is no limit to the number of abstracts that may be submitted from any department. In general, there should be only one submission from the laboratory or program of an individual scientific faculty preceptor.

The completed application packet must be compiled by the Department Chair and submitted electronically by the September deadline.

• All applications will be reviewed by a Selection Committee, consisting of Chairs and Directors of Research from Departments of Ophthalmology.
• The four successful candidates will be notified in October.