Support and Grants

The graduate Ph.D. program in Vision Science began nearly 80 years ago. Today it comprises 31 well-funded faculty members from six departments (representing ten programs) on campus. These include optometry & vision science, psychology, molecular and cell biology, neurobiology, neuroscience, infectious disease and immunology, bioengineering, computer science, physics, and electrical engineering.

Funding Sources

Total includes all research grants, plus NIH CORE, Training, K12, T-35, and UC Berkeley Grants and Fellowships

Recent Grants

Semiconductor Research Corporation
COCOSYS: Center for the Co-Design of Cognitive Systems
PI: Bruno Olshausen
$625,000
January, 2023

National Eye Institute
A Second Look at DREAM: Towards a New Paradigm in Meibomian Gland Evaluation Using Artificial Intelligence
PI: Meng Lin
$219,557
September, 2022

Research Summary
Dry eye is a widespread and costly condition with significant impacts on quality of life, and is most commonly caused by problems with the lipid-secreting glands in the eyelids called Meibomian glands. In this project we will re-analyze a large database of infrared images of the Meibomian glands compiled during the Dry Eye Assessment and Management (DREAM) clinical trial, and employ artificial intelligence to learn detailed morphological phenotypes of these important glands. The primary goal of this project is to identify the specific pathological features of Meibomian gland dysfunction that lead to tear film instability and dry eye, using a novel artificial intelligence approach to reanalyze previously collected clinical data and meibography images.

National Eye Institute
Functional Properties of Amacrine Cells in the Mammalian Retina
PI: Rowland Taylor
$249,772
May, 2022

Research Summary
The goal of this research is to understand how neurons in the retina convert the image on the back of the eye into electrical signals for transmission to the brain. We will focus on understanding the neural signals related to night-vision and to the detection of motion in the visual scene. The results of the investigations will help us to understand how the neural networks function of the healthy eye, which will help to understand how pathological conditions compromise vision, and thereby ultimately point to possible novel therapies and prosthetics for the treatment of blindness.

Society of Hellman Fellows Fund
A Bayesian Model of Visual Impairment
PI: Emily Cooper
$52,853
May, 2022

Cooper Vision
Osiris Assessments in MiSight and Orthokeratology Treatment
PIs: Maria Liu, Co-PI Sarah Singh
$75,000
March, 2022

Glaucoma Research Foundation/Schaffer Grant
LXB4 regulation of microglia function a neuroprotective target
PIs: Karsten Gronert and John Flanagan
$50,000
March, 2022

Research Summary
The goal of the 1-year project is to establish proof of concept that a recently identified neuroprotective signal from retinal astrocytes (Lipoxin B4) mediates its protective actions in glaucomatous neurodegeneration by controlling and maintaining the healthy-housekeeping functions of the resident immune cell (microglia) in the retina. The project builds on a collaborative NEI funded glaucoma research program between the Gronert and Flanagan Labs at Berkeley and the Sivak lab at the University of Toronto and University Health Network. Karsten Gronert, John Flanagan and Jeremy Sivak were awarded a US patent in fall 2022 for Lipoxin and Lipoxin Analogue Mediated Neuroprotection. The inventions is the use of lipoxins and lipoxins based drugs for inhibiting or preventing neurodegeneration in the retina and/or brain.

Cooper Vision
The impact of novel contact lens design on the short-term change of choroidal thickness
PIs: Maria Liu, Co-PI Sarah Singh
$82,000
February, 2022

National Eye Institute
Accelerating photoreceptor replacement therapy with in-vivo cellular imaging of retinal function
PIs: Teresa Puthussery (UC Berkeley), Juliette McGregor (University of Rochester), and David Gamm (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
$1,233,185
September, 2021

Research Summary
Vision loss exacts an enormous toll on individuals and on society, and progress has been slow in developing therapies for restoring vision in the blind. To greatly reduce the time required to develop effective cures for blindness, we have a new way of imaging the retina that can provide information about whether retinal cells benefit from new therapeutic approaches. This novel functional imaging technique will be applied to evaluate photoreceptor replacement therapy in the fovea, the area of the retina that mediates high quality vision. Success in restoring vision at this location will provide strong evidence that this type of therapy could restore usable vision in patients and regenerative therapies should move rapidly into clinical trials.

National Eye Institute
PEDIG: A Randomized Trial to Evaluate Sequential vs Simultaneous Spectacles plus Patching for Amblyopia in Children 3 to <13 Years Old
PI: Debora Chen (lead) and Jennifer Fisher
$57,556
September, 2021

National Eye Institute
Defining Mechanisms Driving Dry Eye Disease Progression
PI: Nancy McNamara (UCB site)
$1,283,820
August, 2021

Research Summary
Dry eye is a pathological hallmark of multiple systemic autoimmune diseases that impact millions of patients and leads to life-long morbidity. This project will address the severe lack of efficacious treatment options that is driven by a combination of inadequate early detection strategies and a poor understanding of disease mechanisms. Using innovative new technologies, we seek to define the mechanisms driving dry eye disease development at the single-cell level, with the goal of discovering new targets for therapeutic intervention.

East Bay Community Foundation
Mechanistic Studies of Retinits Pigmentosis (RP) in Genetic Models
PI: Xiaohua Gong
$27,773
May, 2021

Research Summary
Retinits Pigmentosis (RP) as well as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of untreatable blindness in industrialized countries, are often associated with alterations in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), which ultimately leads to photoreceptor cell death. RPE plays many essential roles in photoreceptor homeostasis and survival throughout life. The goal of this project will test a novel hypothesis that the sodium/proton exchanger 8 (NHE8) regulates the levels of specific downstream targets that are required for the polarity and functions of RPE cells. We will identify the downstream targets of NHE8 in RPE by investigating molecular and cellular differences between the wild-type and NHE8 mutant retinas.

National Eye Institute
Cataractogenesis, Connexin Mutants and Genetic Modifier(s)
PI: Xiaohua Gong
$1,443,398
April, 2021

Research Summary
The eye lens is a syncytial unit coupled by gap junctions; our vision depends on its optical and mechanical properties, such as transparency, refractive index, stiffness and accommodation. This proposal will evaluate a new hypothesis that these properties are achieved through the coordinated roles of gap junctions and cytoskeletal components during lens morphogenesis. Aging, genetic variances and other factors can trigger the pathological conditions in lens cells leading to cataracts, which remain as the leading cause of blindness in the world. Genetic variances of membrane/cytoskeletal proteins influence lens transparency and biomechanics. This research proposal will examine this new hypothesis and expand our knowledge of cataract etiology and prevention.

NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program
Smartglasses for all
PI: Emily Cooper
$543,720
March, 2021

Research Summary
This project will exploit behavioral, psychophysical, and computational approaches to develop insights that advance both our basic and applied understanding of human visual perception. Customized laboratory display and optical equipment will be used in conjunction with state-of-the-art wearable systems to study how people perceive natural and augmented visual stimuli. Guidelines will be developed for how best to design emerging visual display systems that merge digital information with natural vision; these guidelines will encompass populations of people with both typical and impaired vision. The research activities will also advance our fundamental knowledge of human vision by focusing on the perception of complex, binocular stimuli; thus, project outcomes will contribute insights that hasten the development of next-generation technologies while deepening our basic understanding of how humans sense and perceive the natural world.

Glaucoma Research Foundation
A novel approach to assess selective ganglion cell vulnerability in glaucoma
PI: Teresa Puthussery
50,000
March, 2021

Research Summary
Glaucoma is a progressive blinding disease that leads to the degeneration of ganglion cells, the nerve cells that transmit visual signals from the eye to the brain. There are many different ganglion cell subtypes in the human retina, each of which detects different features in the environment such as color, motion and fine spatial detail. In this study, we will use a novel molecular approach to determine whether specific ganglion cell subtypes are selectively lost in post-mortem donor eyes from glaucoma patients. The results of this study are expected to inform efforts to develop more sensitive clinical tests for early detection of glaucoma.

Department of Defense
Probing, Modeling & Reprogramming Visual Perception at the Level of Individual Photoreceptors
PI: Ren Ng (EECS) is the lead PI; Co-PIs are Will Tuten, Bruno Olshausen, and Austin Roorda.
7.5m
February, 2021

Research Summary
Our perception of the world differs markedly from the physical retinal image. Photoreceptors are punctate, yet perception is spatially continuous. Retinal images are highly dynamic due to fixational drift and saccades, yet perception is stable. Cone cells are discretized and unevenly sampled, yet color perception is continuous and consistent. That this is so makes sense, because the computational goal of the brain is to infer properties of the world from image measurements, not to perceive the retinal image per se. However, the actual neural mechanisms underlying these inferential computations remain largely a mystery. In this project, we seek to elucidate this remarkable neural process by probing, modeling, reprogramming and manipulating visual perception at the level of individual photoreceptors. We aim to do this in the fovea – the most important retinal area, but least studied from a physiological perspective because of its intricacy.

NEI F32
Establishing the limits of perceptual interference for visual motion
PI: Emily Cooper and Tyler Manning
132,756
January, 2021

Research Summary
This project has the potential to produce novel insights into fundamental computations in sensory perception, particularly in the context of visual motion perception. Gaining a better grasp of human visual motion perception has the potential for long-term public health relevance because it may inform our understanding of the effects of visual impairment, as well as the design of visual enhancement technologies.

Ameican Academy of Optometry
COVID-19: SARS-Cov-2 Infection at the ocular surface
PI: Suzanne Fleiszig
60,000
December, 2020

Cooper Vision
Efficay of multizone lenses in chicks compared
PI: Wildsoet
190,038
December, 2020

Subcontract UC Santa Cruz
Gaze-contingent computer screen magnification control for people with low vision
PI: Susana Chung
 150,456
September, 2020

Research Summary
People with low vision often use screen magnification software to read on a computer screen. Since a magnifier expands the screen content beyond the physical size of the screen (the “viewport”), it is necessary to move the content using the mouse so that the portion of interest falls within the viewport. This project will facilitate use of a screen magnifier by means of a new software system that relies on the user’s own gaze to control scrolling when reading with magnification.

NEI R21
Functional impact of fixational eye movements in central vision loss
PI: Susana Chung
439,500
September, 2020

Research Summary
Most people who lose their foveal vision due to macular disorders such as age-related macular degeneration often have abnormal fixational eye movements, causing the image of a visual object to move excessively on the retina. The goal of this project is to evaluate whether or not, and how, these abnormal fixational eye movements impact functional vision for people with macular disorders. A solid understanding of the role of fixational eye movements may lead to the development of effective rehabilitation strategies to improve functional vision for people with macular disorders.

Subcontract University of Wisconsin
Neural Codes underlying visual segmentation
PI: Emily Cooper
30,822
September, 2020

Research Summary
Normal brain functions arise from the activity of populations of neurons within cortical networks. When normal patterns of activity across neuronal populations go awry, many neurological disorders occur. The proposed research investigates the neural basis for visual segmentation, a fundamental perceptual function with well-known impairments in some patients. The study will advance our understanding of representing sensory information in neuronal populations in the cerebral cortex. The insights gained from the proposed research may contribute to a better understanding of neurological disorders such as dyslexia and visual agnosia that involve malfunction of visual segmentation.

NEI R01
Significance of corenal cell invasion by bacteria
PI: Suzanne Fleiszig
2,002,500
August, 2020

Research Summary
P. aeruginosa is a leading cause of blinding corneal infections that are also difficult to treat using currently available therapeutics. We have found that when these bacteria enter corneal epithelial cells, they traffic to multiple destinations wherein they express unique virulence and survival factors. Here, we will explore the significance of this intracellular diversification to the bacteria, to the host cell, and to infection in vivo, with the goal of better understanding disease pathogenesis and best practices for its management.

NEI R00
Perceptual stability during torsional eyemovements
PI: Jorge Otero-Millan
746,096
July, 2020

Research Summary
People with unstable visual perception suffer from vexing and disabling consequences such as blurred and jumping vision, mislocalization of objects, imbalance and falls. This research investigates an understudied but important aspect of eye movement control – torsion – to help develop new diagnostic techniques and treatments for patients suffering from various types of visual disabilities.

Knights Templar Eye Foundation, Inc
TBA
PI: Manoj Kulkarni
70,000
July, 2020

Eyenovia, Inc
A multi center study of the safey and efficacy of atropine
PI: Sarah Kochik
34,464
June, 2020

NEI R01
Homeostatic role and therapeutic potential of the neuroprotective retinal lipoxin circuit
Co-PIs: Karsten Gronert, John Flanagan and Jeremy Sivak (U of Toronto).
2,430,277
March, 2020

Research Summary
Glaucoma is the most common neurodegenerative disease in the world and there are no treatments to prevent or rescue the degenerative cascades that lead to blindness. We discovered a neuroprotective lipid mediator pathway in the healthy retina that is disrupted in disease. This project will define the regulation and mechanism of these lipid signals and develop therapeutic methods to restore their protective function in order to stop or prevent glaucoma.

NEI R01
Lens Epithelial cell heterogeneity during development
PI: Xiaohua Gong
1,762,745
February, 2020

Research Summary
This study aims to investigate the molecular and cellular bases of the heterogeneity of lens epithelium that consists of distinct cell clusters with different functions. Moreover, we will explore novel regulatory mechanisms of distinct epithelial cell clusters in lens growth control, lens homeostasis maintenance and various lens pathological outcomes. We will gain insights into fundamental mechanisms about how distinct epithelial cell clusters selectively response to various external stimuli to regulate the lens size and homeostasis over the course of postnatal lens development and aging.