PhD and MS Thesis Summaries (2005)

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEGREES

Chris earned his bachelors in computer science at Brown University. Through his work in computer vision and robotics he developed an interest in human visual perception. His thesis examines how the neuronal processing that occurs in the earliest stages of the visual system can bias the perceived location of moving objects. In addition to presenting a computational model of the well-known Flash Lag Effect, this work has successfully predicted the existence of a new illusion — the Flash Pulfrich effect.

Twenty million Americans have diabetes, and the eye complications of diabetes being the leading cause of blindness in the working age population, there is obvious interest in understanding how to prevent the most serious eye complication — diabetic retinopathy.

These complications are so devastating that all current treatments are aimed at slowing down the progression of vision loss from already existing retinopathy. But the PhD research of Ying Han in the Adams research lab offers some hope for the development of new preventative treatments.

Ying Han's PhD thesis work demonstrated that the tiny electrical responses of the retina (electroretinograms) that are produced from flickering light are abnormal in diabetes before any sight threatening retinopathy is apparent to the clinician. Her work showed that these measures do predict which parts of the eye will, one year later, most likely develop the first signs of retinopathy.

Ying Han's research, and that of Adams and his colleagues, not only provides early warning measures, but the tiny electrical signals can be used to follow the effectiveness of any new therapies designed to prevent retinopathy.

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN VISION SCIENCE DEGREES

Age-related macular degeneration or "AMD" is a disease that blurs or destroys sharp, central vision. It is the leading cause of blindness in people over age 60. Today, there is no known cure for AMD. The cause of AM is also unknown, but most scientists think the cause is a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

The most sight threatening complication of AMD is the uncontrolled growth of blood vessels in the retina. For her thesis work, Janice Lee has been developing and testing gene therapy to stop this blood vessel growth in AMD.

To accomplish this, Janice has used viruses to transfer genes to treat the disease into the eyes of an animal model of macular degeneration. In her research, Janice been able to reduce the number of new vessel growths and preserve the function of the retina. These results give hope to patients that one-day gene therapy will become an accepted and effective treatment in retinal diseases.

This thesis project is an especially significant gift to her mother, who has lost her sight from a retinal disease.

Understanding how eye growth is regulated during early development is important for our understanding myopia or near-sightedness. This condition, the result of eyes growing too long for their optical power, has reached epidemic levels in some Asian countries. For her master's thesis, Varuna s tudied the effects of environmental lighting conditions on eye growth regulation in young chicks, the most commonly used animal model in myopia research. Varuna found that emmetropization, the ability of eyes to regulate their refractive state, is impaired under constant light rearing conditions. Her research provided new insight into how the growth of the anterior and posterior chambers of the eye are regulated.