Dear Friends and Colleagues:

In an effort to prepare our research trainees to share their research achievements and to enhance their skills in public speaking and discussing their work, we would like to foster formal environments and provide educational opportunities at the Byers Eye Institute (BEI) for them, beyond the Friday afternoon research seminars and other teaching conferences.

Toward that goal, we have initiated the Byers Young Investigators Research Conference (BYIRC). The inaugural BYIRC occurred live in April 2019.  We were not able to host BYIRC in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  In 2021, the BYIRC occurred virtually over two Saturday mornings.  The 2023 BYIRC occurred live on Friday, April 21, at the Byers Eye Institute. In 2024, we discussed interests with other peer institutions in the Bay Area and were pleased that the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) formally joined the planning for the 2024 Conference, which occurred on April 12, with recorded attendance.

For 2025, we decided to extend our collaboration further and are thrilled to announce that the University of California San Fransisco (UCSF) and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) have formally joined the planning Team as well. Other institutions will also be sending their trainees to participate.  To that extent, we have now changed the name of the Conference to Bay Area Young Investigators Research Conference (still BYIRC!)  

It is with tremendous pleasure for us to announce that the 2025 BYIRC will be on Friday, April 25, 2025, starting at 7:30 AM PDT, in the Conference Center at 3145 Porter Drive, Palo Alto, on the campus of Stanford University. 

As with past Conferences, we would like to ask all colleagues to invite and encourage secondary school, undergraduate, medical and graduate students, residents, post-doctoral fellows, clinical fellows, and visiting scholars with whom they work and mentor to participate.  As discussed during our previous faculty meetings, we are also inviting our BEI residents and other residents to submit their work and present as well.  It will be a wonderful opportunity for our trainees to present formally in front of an audience who may or may not be fully knowledgeable of their work.  Among the skills to be mastered is the ability to present information in such a way that can be comprehended by a broad audience.  

We will plan so that there will be different sessions throughout the Conference that will be moderated by Byers/Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and UCSF faculty members.  The faculty and the audience will provide feedback to the trainee that hopefully will be very productive and educational.  The Planning Committee and the Advisory Committee have suggested that each trainee is allowed sufficient time devoted to the oral presentation and discussion and comments.

All faculty members, residents, and trainees are invited to attend the Conference, in full or in part, to help to provide feedback to the research trainees.  Faculty mentors of the research trainees are asked to be present to support their trainees.

As April 25, 2025, will be just a few weeks before the 2025 ARVO Congress in Salt Lake City, BYIRC will be a wonderful opportunity for research trainees to present their ARVO work before they have to do so in Utah.  Abstract submission for BYIRC is due no later than Saturday, March 29, 2025, so that a proper Program can be arranged. 

In another effort to prepare our trainees to be able to plan scientific programs so that in the future they may participate in the ARVO Planning Committee or that for another congress, we will have the research trainees plan this Conference together with the inputs from the Faculty Advisory Committee.  We will then invite the appropriate Byers/Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and UCSF faculty members to moderate various sessions to stimulate discussions among the presenters and the attendees. 

The BYIRC website has been set up by Sohail Halim, MBBS, a collaborator at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford: https://med.stanford.edu/ophthalmology/research/byirc.html

We thank everyone for your support of the Bay Area Young Investigators Research Conference to prepare and mentor our research trainees for their future careers.  Please let us know if we can provide you with any additional information. 

Best regards,

BYIRC Young Investigators Planning Committee

Amir Akhavanrezayat (Nguyen, Do, and Or Laboratory, Stanford), Coordinator

Francis Sandy Anover (Nguyen, Do, and Or Laboratory, Stanford)

Lyna Azzouz (Resident Service, Stanford)

Mohajeet Balveer Bhuckory (Palanker Laboratory, Stanford)

Dalia El Feky (Nguyen, Do, and Or Laboratory, Stanford)

Houri Esmaeil Khanian (Myung Laboratory, Stanford)

Valencia Fernandes (Lakkaraju Laboratory, UCSF)

Julian Garcia (Liu Laboratory, Stanford)

Lobna Hamed (Taylor Laboratory, UC Berkeley)

Jia-Horung Hung (Nguyen, Do, and Or Laboratory, Stanford)

Kholood Janjua (Sepah Laboratory, Stanford)

Niusha Kasiri (Moshiri Laboratory, UC Davis)

Hyeonji Kim (DeBoer Laboratory, Stanford)

John Kircher (Resident Service, CPMC)

Karteek Kunala (Dubra Laboratory, Stanford)

Beatrice Le (Flannery and Taylor Laboratory, UC Berkeley)

Shangbang Luo (Roodra Laboratory, UC Berkeley)

Ziming Luo (Goldberg Laboratory, Stanford)

Fateme Montazeri (Emami Laboratory, UC Davis)

Vinod Reddy Lekkala (Lamba Laboratory, UCSF)

Purna Nangia (Mruthyunjaya Laboratory, Stanford)

Franklin Ruan (Sophia Wang Laboratory, Stanford)

Paripoorna Sharma (Flannery Laboratory, UC Berkeley)

Scott Sorenson (Resident Service, CPMC)

Ngoc Trong Tuong Than (Nguyen, Do, and Or Laboratory, Stanford)

Gabriel Velez (Resident Service, Stanford)

Yuyang Zeng (Hu Laboratory, Stanford)

Administrative Assistant

Jeremy Lucky

BYIRC Faculty Advisory Committee 

Sharon Bentley (UC Berkeley)

Charles DeBoer (Stanford)

Diana Do (Stanford)

Xin Duan (UCSF)

Alfredo Dubra (Stanford)

Jacque Duncan (UCSF)

Jeffrey Goldberg (Stanford)

Mary Elizabeth Hartnett (Stanford)

Yang Hu (Stanford)

Joyce Liao (Stanford)

Wendy Liu (Stanford)

Ala Moshiri (UC Davis)

Prithvi Mruthyunjaya (Stanford)

Quan Dong Nguyen (Stanford), Chair

Christopher Or (Stanford)

Carolyn Pan (Stanford)

Jennifer Rose-Nussbaumer (Stanford)

Gaurav Shah (CPMC)

Stephen Smith (Stanford)

Yang Sun (Stanford)

W. Rowland Taylor (UC Berkeley)

Sui Wang (Stanford)