The HMS community celebrated a professorship honoring the chair of the HMS Department of Ophthalmology at a winter event that also announced the installation of the chair’s first incumbent, a longtime friend and collaborator.
“We are grateful to the Foundation of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary for making today’s celebration possible, said HMS Dean, Jeffery S. Flier as he opened the February 28 celebration of the Charles Edward Whitten Professorship in Ophthalmology.
The professorship honors Joan Whitten Miller, the Henry Willard Williams Professor of Ophthalmology, chief of ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) and Massachusetts General Hospital, and head of the Department of Ophthalmology. Currently named for Miller’s father, the chair will be renamed the Joan Whitten Miller Professorship in Ophthalmology upon her retirement.
The first incumbent is Evangelos Gragoudas, a colleague and close friend of Miller’s and an authority on the diagnosis and management of intraocular tumors. Gragoudas pioneered the use of proton beam therapy as an alternative to enucleation. He collaborated with Miller on preclinical studies of photodynamic therapy (PDT) using the light-sensitive dye Verteporfin for the treatment of choroidal neovascularization. He also was a part of the team that demonstrated the critical role of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in ocular neovascularization and went on to develop therapies targeting VEGF. “Evangelos’ scientific discoveries in developing therapies for ocular malignancies and for retinal neovascular diseases have saved the sight and the lives of countless patients,” said Flier.
Miller, an HMS graduate, completed an ophthalmology residency and fellowship at MEEI. An expert on macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, she is co-editor of Albert and Jakobiec’s Third Edition Principles and Practice of Ophthalmology, a named inventor on six U.S. patents, and holds numerous awards, including the 2010 Joseph B. Martin Dean’s Leadership Award.
“Joan is the first woman to be appointed chair to Harvard’s Department of Ophthalmology and the first endowed professorship in ophthalmology to be named for a woman,” said Wycliffe “Wyc” Grousbeck, chair of the foundation and board of directors of the MEEI. “The advancement of women and their ability to contribute in every level of science and medicine is important to all of us.”
“Evan and Joan have many things in common,” said Simmons Lessell, a senior member of the neuro-ophthalmology service at MEEI who helped train the two. “From the start, they shared an intense interest in disorders of the retina and a dedication to discovering and implementing treatment for potentially blinding, even fatal, ophthalmic disorders,” he said.
Miller’s husband, John, recounted years of successful collaboration and friendship between Miller and Gragoudas. “Evan has been a constant in our family, given the intensity and depth of commitment of both of them over the past 20 years to their research,” Miller said. “It’s fitting that Evan should be the first holder of the Whitten professorship, forever linking these two names in scholarship and in academics.”
