Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the SUNY Eye Institute

In an article that appeared in a prior volume of this journal, 1 an overview was presented of the formation, structure and scope of purpose of the SUNY Eye Institute (SEI), a collaborative research and educational consortium that initially comprised of members of the ophthalmology departments from the four health science Participants included SEI-affiliated faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, ophthalmology residents and research staff, plus external invited guests. The one-and-a-half-day meeting consisted of formal oral presentations, including a Keynote Address (the Robert Barlow Lecture), lectures by representative faculty from each of the constituent campuses of the SEI, plus a special external presentation by a representative from Bausch & Lomb. In addition, students and faculty gave poster presentations representing the wide range of research going on within the SEI. The Robert Barlow Lecture, which honors the legacy of Robert Barlow, PhD, the " founding father " of the SEI and an internationally acclaimed vision scientist, educator, and administrator, was given of Medicine). Dr. William's lecture, entitled " Seeing Through Retinal Mosaics " , presented a masterful overview of the development and applications of adaptive optics (AO), 2,3 one of the most powerful tools developed in the past decade for imaging ocular cells (notably, photoreceptors) noninvasively in the living eye. For his co-development of the AO technology and advancement of its use in research and clinical settings, Dr. Williams subsequently was named a co-recipient of the highly prestigious António Champalimaud Vision Award for 2012, along with Drs. the Champalimaud Foundation in Portugal. A list of the other speakers and the titles of their presentations includes: • Francesca Pignoni, PhD (SUNY Upstate Medical University): Developing a Fly Model for Genetic/Pharmaceutical Intervention in Retinal Disease. In the current issue of this journal, we have included articles based upon four of the above mentioned lectures (see articles herein by corresponding authors Drs. 4-7. These articles represent a small sampling of the diversity of research initiatives ongoing throughout the SEI.