Visual Science Training Program

Project Summary In this renewal application, funding is requesed for continued support of the Johns Hopkins University T32-supported Visual Sciences Training Program (VSTP) (2020-2025). The VSTP is a combined effort of the Wilmer Eye Institute (Department of Ophthalmology) and the Departments of Neuroscience, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Biology, and Institute of Genetic Medicine. The program, administered and directed by PI Donald Zack and co-directors Jeremy Nathans and Amer Riazuddin, provides a multidisciplinary training platform with a diverse faculty covering cover many of the major avenues of modern visual science. The goal of the program is to recruit young, talented scientists into the visual sciences, and to provide them with broad theoretical and methodological research training, which will allow them to contribute to our understanding of the biology of vision and the pathological mechanisms responsible for visual loss in the context of human disease. Johns Hopkins is fortunate to have a large number of investigators exploring different avenues of vision research; their approaches range from the molecular and cellular to the systems levels, and the technologies they employ include cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, developmental neurobiology, stem cell biology, electrophysiology, functional imaging, psychophysics, bioinformatics, genomics, and genetics. This diverse vision research community provides a wide variety of research options for VSTP trainees. In this VSTP renewal application, we are proposing to accept two predoctoral students per year and support both of them for two years, and to accept two postdoctoral fellows per year, and to support each of them for one year. As part of our training program, the VSTP, in collaboration with Wilmer Eye Institute and other Hopkins graduate programs, organizes and provides vision-related courses, seminars, and related activities. Additional training in the problems of clinical ophthalmology, with an emphasis on translational problem solving, is available to all VSTP trainees through the medical student ophthalmology program and grand rounds. Through these programs, we hope to continue and expand upon the VSTP’s success in recruiting, inspiring, and training the next generation of vision scientists.