A note from our Chair

2021 marked a hopeful new chapter and my sixth year back at Stanford. We began this year still feeling the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Amid this pandemic, I have witnessed our department come together as we prioritized the safety of our patients, employees, and community. We continue to advance our devotion to clinical care, research, and education. While this year still included sanitization, masks and PPE, and physical distancing standards, it also included the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The unprecedented development and distribution of these vaccines was an important step mitigating against this pandemic and makes us optimistic for the future.

A few noteworthy department achievements over the past year include the Stanford Human Ocular Motor Lab’s neurorehabilitation work and our initiating the Stanford Human Perception Lab and the Vision Performance Center (pages 4-8); our pediatric team growing to provide the highest level of care in research and clinical settings (pages 12-15); strengthening our global health efforts in Belize and Africa with involvement from multiple department members (pages 20, 24, and 25); and accelerating research at the Mary M. and Sash A. Spencer Center for Vision Research at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford thanks to the support of a number of generous philanthropic donors (pages  20-23).

As we look ahead to an ambitious strategic plan for 2022, I am again reminded of the privilege it is to lead our team at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford. Every day I witness our team’s commitment to providing compassionate patient care, advancement of cutting edge basic and translational research, and training of the next generation of physicians and scientists in our field. I am confident we will carry these same practices forward, focused on our vision of a future without vision loss or blindness, in our community and around the world. It is my hope that this report gives you a glimpse into the innovative work we do.

With immense gratitude, I want to honor our donors, colleagues, staff, alumni, patients, and community for helping us build our distinguished Department of Ophthalmology.