Presented by International Society for Eye Research (ISER)

Made possible by a gift to RRF in honor of Paul Kayser, the RRF Paul Kayser International Award in Retina Research was first presented in 1986. This international award recognizes lifetime achievement by a vision scientist who has made a significant contribution to the understanding of vitreoretinal diseases or disorders. This $50,000 award is given every two years.

2024 Award Recipient

Hendrik P. N. Scholl, MD, MA, PhD

Dr. School is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Medical University of Vienna, Austria, and Chief Medical Officer, Belite Bio in Zug, Switzerland.

Dr. Scholl will receive his award and present a lecture at the XXVI Biennial Meeting of the International Society for Eye Research (ISER), in Buenos Aires, Argentina in October 2024. His lecture is titled:

Therapy development for inherited macular degeneration

Education, Career Achievements, and Research Interests

Hendrik Scholl is one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB). He was previously a Professor and past Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Basel, Switzerland. He specializes in the treatment of retinal diseases, including age-related macular degeneration and inherited retinal and macular dystrophies such as Stargardt disease.

Prof. Scholl is a graduate of the Medical Faculty of the University of Tübingen/Germany. After having held several academic positions at the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn, Germany, he was appointed as Professor of Ophthalmology in 2010 at the Wilmer
Eye Institute, John Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Unites States. At the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he headed the Retinal Degeneration Clinic and the Visual Neurophysiology Service.

Prof. Scholl has authored over 280 articles and reviews in peer-reviewed journals and received numerous prestigious awards, including the European Vision Award, the President’s Award of the American Society of Retinal Specialists, the W. Richard Green Award and the Paul Henkind Memorial Award of the Macula Society, the Swiss Alfred-Vogt Award, and the Kupfer award of the Association for Research in Vision
and Ophthalmology (ARVO). He holds an honorary doctorate from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary,  Prof. Scholl participates and/or chairs several Data Monitoring Committees of large clinical trials and has further leadership roles in ophthalmology such as the President of the European Vision Institute (EVI) and
the Chairman of the European Vision Clinical Research Network (EVICR.net)

2022 Award Recipient

Steven J. Fliesler, PhD, FARVO

Distinguished Professor, SUNY and the Meyer H. Riwchun Endowed Chair Professor of Ophthalmology, and Vice-Chair/Director of Research in the Department of Ophthalmology, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, of the State University of New York (SUNY)- University at Buffalo (UB)

In February, 2023, Dr. Fliesler received his award and presented a lecture at the XXV Biennial Meeting of the International Society for Eye Research (ISER), in Queensland, Australia.

Education, Career Achievements, and Research Interests

Dr. Fliesler obtained a PhD in Biochemistry from Rice University, did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cullen Eye Institute/Baylor College of Medicine, and was previously on the faculties of Baylor College of Medicine, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute/University of Miami School of Medicine, and Saint Louis University School of Medicine prior to joining the UB faculty in 2008.  Dr. Fliesler holds concurrent appointments as a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at UB, as well as being a Research Career Scientist at the Buffalo VA Medical Center (VA Western NY Healthcare System). His research is focused on inborn errors of cholesterol and isoprenoid metabolism and their impact on the development, structure and function of the retina, as well as on blast injury to the eye.  He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and review articles, and is the editor of two books. His research program has been funded continuously for nearly 40 years by federal and private extramural grants.

Dr. Fliesler is the Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Eye Research, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Eye and Vision, an Associate Editor for Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, and serves on four other journal editorial boards, including Molecular Vision and the Journal of Lipid Research.  He has received multiple honors and awards, including a James S. Adams Scholar Award and a Senior Scientist Award from Research to Prevent Blindness, Silver-tier (2009) and Gold-tier (2014) Fellow of ARVO (FARVO), a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities (2014), was designated a UB Distinguished Professor (2014-18), and was promoted to the rank of SUNY Distinguished Professor in 2018.  He has given multiple named lectures and keynote presentations at universities and scientific meetings in the U.S. and abroad. He has served as Councilor for North America, Treasurer, and President of the International Society for Eye Research (ISER). For ARVO, he has formerly served as: Chair of the Publications Committee, a member of the Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC) and the Board of Trustees (representing the Retinal Cell Biology Section), and President. He currently serves as Vice-chair of the SUNY Distinguished Academy Board as well as the Chair of the Ludwig von Sallmann Prize Committee.

2020 Award Recipient

Samuel M. Wu, PhD

Professor of Ophthalmology, Neuroscience, and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics,

The Camille and Raymond Hankamer Chair in Ophthalmology, Cullen Eye Institute

Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas

Lecture presented at ISER 2020 Award Winners Webinar, Tuesday, December 15, 2020. Dr. Wu was also recognized at the XXV meeting in Australia in February, 2022.

Title of Lecture

A2 Amacrine Cell-mediated Signaling Pathways in Healthy and Diseased Mammalian Retinas

Education, Career Achievements, and Research Interests

Samuel Miao-Sin Wu was born in Beijing, China, and grew up in Hong Kong. He received a B.A. degree in Physics and Biophysics from University of California, Berkeley in 1973 and a Ph.D in Biophysics from Harvard University in 1979. After a 3-year postdoctoral training in Neurobiology at UC Berkeley, he joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas in 1982, where he is currently a Professor of Ophthalmology, Neuroscience, and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, and the Camille and Raymond Hankamer Chair in Ophthalmology. Professor Wu’s research concerns detailed molecular and synaptic mechanisms underlying retinal function and eye diseases. His lab pioneers investigations on rod and cone photoreceptor interactions and parallel information pathways in the retina. His team has made discoveries on how individual ion channels, receptors, synapses and gene products mediate retinal function in normal animals and dysfunction in mouse models for eye diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa, glaucoma and Bardet Biedl Syndrome.

Professor Wu has received many honors and awards, including the Sam and Bertha Brochstein Award (1987), the Marjorie W. Margolin Prize (1991), and James M. Barr Award (1998) from the Retina Research Foundation; the Dolly Green Scholars Award (1989) and Senior Scientific Investigators Award (1997) from Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc; the Boycott Prize (2006) from FASEB Summer Research Conference; the Ludwig von Sallmann Prize (2008) from the International Society for Eye Research; the Friedenward Award (2009) from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology and the Alcon Research Award (2011) from the Alcon Research Institute.

2018 Award Recipient

Krzysztof Palczewski, PhD

Chair, Department of Pharmacology

Case Western Reserve School of Medicine

Cleveland, Ohio

Award presented at ISER XXIII Biennial Meeting in Northern Ireland, UK

September 10, 2018

Title of Lecture: Chemistry and Biology of Vision

Education, Career Achievements, and Research Interests

Dr. Palczewski has made major scientific contributions to the biology and chemistry of vertebrate vision. He and his colleagues are especially renowned for first solving the crystal structures of inactive and photoactivated bovine rhodopsin, a prototype for G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that comprise the largest most diverse family of human drug targets. Solving the crystal structure of retinoid isomerase, and discovering CaBP4, a regulator of synaptic function, constitute additional scientific breakthroughs. Use of advanced high-resolution molecular imaging techniques revealed toxic fluorophores that accumulate in retinal diseases and aging. Importantly, Palczewski has engineered mutated visual cycle proteins in transgenic animal models to understand their roles in vision and devise therapies for human retinopathies. One such advance implicated all-trans-retinal accumulation in retinas of mice with acute light-induced retinal dystrophy. Another mouse model mimicking human Stargardt’s disease and age-related macular degeneration responded favorably to retinylamine which slows the retinoid cycle. Finally, bypassing malfunctioning enzymes of the retinoid cycle, the artificial chromophore 9-cis-retinal partially restored vision in a transgenic mouse model and several patients with Leber’s congenital amaurosis.

2016 Award Recipient

King-Wai Yau, PhD

Professor of Neuroscience

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Baltimore, MD

Award presented at ISER XXII Biennial Meeting, Tokyo, Japan, September 28, 2016

Title of Lecture: Melanopsin Signaling in the Eye

Dr. Yau

Education, Career Achievements, and Research Interests

King-Wai Yau was born in China and grew up in Hong Kong. After high school and a year of medical school there, he came to the US and received an A.B. in physics from Princeton (1971, University Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi) and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard (1975) under John Nicholls. He did postdoctoral work with Denis Baylor at Stanford, developing the suction-pipette-recording method that revolutionized the study of retinal rods and cones. He spent 1979-81 at Cambridge, England with Sir Alan Hodgkin, during which time he became intrigued by rod/cone phototransductions. In 1981, he moved to Department of Physiology and Biophysics at University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, where he contributed greatly to solving this problem. He rose to full professor in 1985, and, a year later, relocated to Johns Hopkins as Professor of Neuroscience and HHMI Investigator. At Hopkins, Yau investigated rod/cone phototransductions in ever greater detail. He also expanded over time into molecular biology, olfactory transduction, ion-channel molecular physiology, mouse genetics, intrinsically-photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, as well as retinal diseases and some translational work.

Yau received England’s Rank Prize in Optoelectronics (with Denis Baylor and Trevor Lamb) in 1980, Friedenwald Award from Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (1993), Alcon Award in Eye Research twice (1994, 2005), Magnes Prize from Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1996), Balazs Prize from International Society for Eye Research (2006), Portugal’s Antonio Champalimaud Vision Award (with Jeremy Nathans) in 2008, CNIB Chanchlani Global Vision Award, Canada (2012), and the tri-yearly National Academy of Sciences Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics (2013). Yau is a member of National Academy of Scienes and a Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

http://www.iser.org/prizes.html

Previous RRF Kayser International Award Recipients

2014    Robert E. Marc, PhD

2012    Robert E. Anderson, MD, PhD

2010    Frank Werblin, PhD

2008    John Dowling, PhD

2006    Dean Bok, PhD

2005    Judah Folkman, MD, and Gary W. Abrams, MD

2004    Gregory Acland, DMV, Gustavo Aquirre, DMV, Jean Bennett, PhD,

William Hausworth, PhD, Samuel Jacobson, MD, and Albert Maquire, MD

2003    Eugene deJuan, MD, and Wallace Founds, MD

2002    Dennis Davey, PhD

2001    Hilel Lewis, MD

2000    Debora Farber, PhD

1999    Tatsuo Hirose, MD, and Akitoshi Yoshida, MD

1998    Anita Hentrickson, PhD

1997    Jerry Shields, MD

1996    Akimichi Kaneko, MD

1995    Enrique Malbran, MD

1994    Alan C. Bird, MD

1993    Thaddeus Dryja, MD

1992    Alan M. Laties, MD

1991    John P. Sarks, FRCS, and Shirley H. Sarks, FRCS

1990    Neville N. Osborne, PhD,Dsc., and Berndt J. Ehinger, MD

1989    David Hubel, MD

1988    Denis Baylor, MD

1987    H. Gobind Khorana, PhD

1986    Shomi Bhattacharya, PhD, and  Alan F. Wright