Making a Lasting Impact

Q: What made you interested in doing research on infants?

"My mother organized opportunities for children with developmental disabilities to ride horses for about 30 years. These children taught me, in my teens, about the impressive ways they had learned to function in the world. This launched my interest in how postnatal experience impacts development. At that time, visual neuroscientists were also demonstrating the effect of atypical visual experience on the development of the visual cortex. I was drawn to the earliest opportunity we might have to make a lasting impact, infancy."

Q: What are some of your favorite, and least favorite, aspects of doing vision research with infants?

"Strangely, they are basically the same. The challenge of gathering meaningful data from infants leads to both rewarding creativity and total frustration. I always start to chuckle when an infant grins at me and pulls my carefully constructed equipment apart."

Q: What is your favorite lesson to share with young children about eyes or vision?

"Around the time that they start school, it is a lot of fun to ask them if they would like to look inside somebody’s eye. They regularly look at me with disbelief and then grin when I set up an instrument for them to do it."

Q: How did your time at Berkeley influence your career trajectory?

"A simple answer. It broadened my curiosity and taught me how to ask questions. That has been at the core of my career and I am very grateful."

Q: Do you have a favorite paper or project that you’ve completed in your career?

"There are a number but, if I need to choose one, I would say a project we did to understand how infants were coordinating their coupled accommodation and vergence performance given their increased hyperopic accommodative demand and reduced, narrow IPD, vergence demand. Both of these immaturities would predict that typical infants might over-converge, pushing them into esophoria and potentially strabismus in the first months after birth. How are they keeping their eyes aligned? We constructed equipment to reliably measure infants’ heterophorias and fusional vergence ranges at 3 months after birth, when the literature said they are only first starting to demonstrate responses to retinal disparity.

Counter to my prediction, they showed us that they typically have a small exophoria while they accommodate to overcome their hyperopia and that they have almost adult-like reflex fusional vergence ranges. The data were clean and compelling, showing us that the ocular motor system is providing the developing brain with robust binocular visual experience in the 3D world from the very first weeks after birth.

We are now framing some of our work around the question of how this system, that is apparently able to compensate for hyperopia and immature vergence demands, derails into clinical conditions over the next months and years after birth. This work is at the intersection of neuroscience, visual optics, computer vision and predictive modeling—drawing on all of the curiosity that Berkeley encouraged."

Q: How do you approach translating basic research into clinical practice?

"To my mind, the most important part of this effort is to develop a research question or goal that holds key clinical relevance. The sound underlying logic must be laid out carefully so that scientists and clinicians working at any point on the translational process can gather around the potential impact on patients."

Q: What has surprised you most about your research/academic career?

"I have never been one to plan out my future (my father would tell me that there is nothing as constant as change). Instead, I have focused on being open to opportunities to make a difference. The biggest surprise has been that these opportunities have been available regularly both in terms of insights and technology to ask new questions in research and in terms of teaching and service in academia. I have never been bored."

Q: Which new technology are you most excited about because of its potential to help kids, and which one are you least excited about because of its potential to negatively impact kids?

"This question asks for specific examples. I am going to reiterate the approach that I laid out above, however. I am most excited about new technologies with solid underlying logic and mechanistic understanding, and least excited about technologies that are weakly understood in terms of their action on the visual system. The advent of machine learning is challenging this approach in that we may have limited understanding of an effective model, but I still believe that we must understand the logic of its impact on the visual system. New technologies always involve risk, which is of particular concern when working with children. This risk becomes ethical if the approach has a solid justification and basis."

Q: What would you say to an OD student not sure of pursuing a research career?

"I would start by saying that I am biased because I have had such meaningful experiences in a research career. I would ask the student to describe the factors involved in their personal decision and talk those through with them, potentially providing ideas for challenges such as financial support. I would ask them what typically gives them the most satisfaction; for some it is helping individual patients and for others—myself included—it is the prospect of generating new knowledge that will impact many patients. A research career is full of constant challenge and hard work but comes with intellectual stimulation and freedom. If a student is passionate about generating new knowledge and working hard, I will give them all the support I can and encourage them to talk to many people with experience in the different types of research careers that are available these days. They should go for it."

Q: What advice do you have for OD and VS students who are interested in studying infant vision?

"First, I would love to meet them and answer any questions they have. Second, I would advise them that working with infants involves a subtle combination of attributes. In both clinical care and research, this work requires patience, a sense of humor, and perseverance. We must develop technical skills to compensate for an infant’s inability to respond to instruction and be prepared for the fact that we won’t always be able to achieve our goals. We are, however, rewarded with very meaningful work that holds promise for lifelong improvement in visual function. I have no regrets about the work that I do and get to laugh every day."

Q: What is your fondest memory from your time at Berkeley?

"This one is a little odd, but I believe I would select it as my “fondest.” The Vision Science Group was having a picnic. I was standing talking with faculty members Russ and Karen DeValois. Russ looked across the field and exclaimed, 'Wow, look at that!' A post-doc was approaching in the distance with a huge super soaker water toy. When he arrived, Russ immediately asked, 'Can I look at that thing?' In Russ’ excitement about pressing buttons and figuring it out, he managed to fire it and soak Karen from a distance of about 2 ft. He looked up sheepishly and Karen just quietly said, 'It’s OK Russ.' Despite all of the challenges of fast-paced professional lives, Russ was still a curious kid at heart and Karen showed grace and patience. I think of that moment often to this day."

Q: When you’re not working, what do you like to do to relax and have fun?

"Have adventures with my wife and friends. My experiences at Berkeley taught me to find the adventure in just about anything, whether it is growing food in the garden, kayaking on the lake, hiking in the woods, wandering through a city, working on the house, trying to bathe the cat, or laughing when my baking attempt failed."

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