Schepens Eye Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear has named Patricia D’Amore as director of research at Schepens Eye Research Institute. D’Amore is professor of ophthalmology and pathology at Harvard Medical School. As director of eesearch, she will serve as the senior leader at Schepens and as a member of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear research leadership team.
D’Amore’s selection follows a rigorous, eight-month effort by an HMS-appointed search committee to identify a highly accomplished academic and scientific leader who has achieved significant success in advancing the field of vision science.
D’Amore has distinguished herself as an astute investigator, dedicated teacher, and gifted administrator who brings nearly three decades of scientific accomplishment and leadership to her new role. Her responsibilities will include shaping Schepens’ research goals and objectives, crafting the Institute’s scientific policy development and priorities, mentoring faculty and overseeing faculty career development and promotion, and building collaborative relationships between Harvard research groups and clinical areas, and with industry and academia, among other critical duties.
From 2001 until 2011, D’Amore served as co-chair of the Program in Development in Angiogenesis, Invasion & Metastasis at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. At Schepens, she was appointed associate director of research in 2002, and assumed the role of co-director of research in 2009. More recently, she was named co-director of the AMD Center of Excellence at HMS. She founded the Boston Angiogenesis Meeting, now in its 14th year, as a forum for presenting new findings and promoting collaboration, understanding, and advancement in angiogenesis research. More recently, she co-directed the highly successful biennial Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) Symposium, an international forum that draws an elite group of clinicians and researchers to advance discussion on a wide array of AMD topics. For her efforts in training future leaders in research, she was honored in 2006 with the A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award.
As an internationally recognized expert in vascular growth and development, D’Amore’s investigations have led to a deeper understanding of the molecular basis of eye diseases, and helped form the foundations of vascular targeting therapies. Her work uncovered important physiological roles of vascular growth factors, and yielded crucial insight into the safe use of antiangiogenic therapies. She contributed to the development of vascular-targeting therapies (VEGF inhibitors) - and today, these therapies are used to treat various cancers and retinal disease, including age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, and have helped millions of people avoid blindness.
She has received multiple recognitions for her scientific and academic contributions, including a Senior Scientific Investigator Award from Research to Prevent Blindness (2006), Gold Fellow recognition by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (2009), and the 2012 Rous-Whipple Award from the American Society of Investigative Pathology.
