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Visual Sciences Training Program

Program Overview

There are few health problems regarded with more significance than the loss of one's sight. The National Institutes of Health holds vision with such high regard that there is a dedicated institute, The National Eye Institute, for promotion and funding of research in the visual sciences.  Vision research has a strong track record at Case Western Reserve University, leading to the formation of the National Eye Institute-supported Visual Sciences Research Center in 1996.  On the research strengths at CASE, we established the Visual Sciences Training Program (VSTP).

The VSTP is comprised of faculty within a multi-disciplinary vision sciences research community at CASE. Our program faculty hold primary appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Genetics, Medicine, Molecular Biology & Microbiology, Neurology, Neurosciences, Ophthalmology, Pathology, and Pharmacology. Graduate students in the VSTP work toward the Ph.D. degree in any one of the basic science departments. Our trainees conduct research in any of the five major areas of emphasis within the VSTP: (a) Visual System Development, (b) Extraocular Muscle Biology, (c) Ocular Consequences of Aging and Diabetes, (d) Ocular Immunology and Inflammation, and (e) Translational Research. Interactions between faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students in the VSTP and the broader research community at CASE and University Hospitals of Cleveland create an excellent training opportunity in vision science.

Strengths of training in vision science at CASE:

  • Exceptionally strong research environment at CASE and its hospital affiliates

  • Training that is discipline-specific (departmental), thematic (within one of five major thematic groups in vision research, and laboratory-focused (with any of our 25 nationally recognized vision researchers) 

  • A training program that develops a students abilities to pose biologically and clinically relevant questions in the visual sciences

  • An ability to conduct hypothesis driven research using the latest equipment and techniques

Program Faculty and Departments

Major Research Themes of the Visual Sciences Training Program

Research Resources

Predoctoral Trainees-Ph.D. or M.D.-Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Trainees

Cleveland, CWRU, and the Basic Science Training Program Links

 

 
 
 
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