Research Awards

We are pleased to showcase our exceptional award recipients, both past and present! These individuals have demonstrated talent, dedication, and hard work. We couldn't be prouder and are honored to celebrate their success.

Copenhagen Award

The Copenhagen award was established to recognize a UCSF graduate student, postdoctoral fellow or clinical fellow mentored by a faculty member in the Department of Ophthalmology who has published outstanding work in the area of laboratory visual sciences.

2015	Mao Mao (Gould lab)
	Mao M, Smith RS, Alavi MV, Marchant JK, Cosma M, Libby RT, John SW, Gould DB. Strain-Dependent Anterior Segment Dysgenesis and Progression to Glaucoma in Col4a1 Mutant Mice. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2015 Oct;56(11):6823-31. doi: 10.1167/iovs.15-17527. PMID: 26567795; PMCID: PMC4627250.
2016	Anton Delwig (Copenhagen lab)
	Delwig A, Larsen DD, Yasumura D, Yang CF, Shah NM, Copenhagen DR. Retinofugal Projections from Melanopsin-Expressing Retinal Ganglion Cells Revealed by Intraocular Injections of Cre-Dependent Virus. PLoS One. 2016 Feb 19;11(2):e0149501. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0149501. PMID: 26895233; PMCID: PMC4764510.
2017	Ivan Anastassov (Dunn lab)
	Anastassov IA, Wang W, Dunn FA. Synaptogenesis and synaptic protein localization in the postnatal development of rod bipolar cell dendrites in mouse retina. J Comp Neurol. 2019 Jan 1;527(1):52-66. doi: 10.1002/cne.24251. Epub 2017 Jun 12. PMID: 28547795; PMCID: PMC5745277.
2018	Li Xuan Tan (Lakkaraju lab)
	Kaur G, Tan LX, Rathnasamy G, La Cunza N, Germer CJ, Toops KA, Fernandes M, Blenkinsop TA, Lakkaraju A. Aberrant early endosome biogenesis mediates complement activation in the retinal pigment epithelium in models of macular degeneration. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Sep 4;115(36):9014-9019. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1805039115. Epub 2018 Aug 20. PMID: 30126999; PMCID: PMC6130344.
2019	Rachel Care (Dunn lab)
	Care RA, Kastner DB, De la Huerta I, Pan S, Khoche A, Della Santina L, Gamlin C, Santo Tomas C, Ngo J, Chen A, Kuo YM, Ou Y, Dunn FA. Partial Cone Loss Triggers Synapse-Specific Remodeling and Spatial Receptive Field Rearrangements in a Mature Retinal Circuit. Cell Rep. 2019 May 14;27(7):2171-2183.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.04.065. PMID: 31091454; PMCID: PMC6624172.
2020	Swapnil Shinde (Nachury lab)
	Shinde SR, Nager AR, Nachury MV. Ubiquitin chains earmark GPCRs for BBSome-mediated removal from cilia. J Cell Biol. 2020 Dec 7;219(12):e202003020. doi: 10.1083/jcb.202003020. PMID: 33185668; PMCID: PMC7716378.
2021	Nilsa La Cunza (Lakkaraju lab)
	La Cunza N, Tan LX, Thamban T, Germer CJ, Rathnasamy G, Toops KA, Lakkaraju A. Mitochondria-dependent phase separation of disease-relevant proteins drives pathological features of age-related macular degeneration. JCI Insight. 2021 May 10;6(9):e142254. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.142254. PMID: 33822768; PMCID: PMC8262309.
2022	Nicole Tsai (Duan lab)
	Tsai NY, Wang F, Toma K, Yin C, Takatoh J, Pai EL, Wu K, Matcham AC, Yin L, Dang EJ, Marciano DK, Rubenstein JL, Wang F, Ullian EM, Duan X. Trans-Seq maps a selective mammalian retinotectal synapse instructed by Nephronectin. Nat Neurosci. 2022 May;25(5):659-674. doi: 10.1038/s41593-022-01068-8. Epub 2022 May 6. PMID: 35524141; PMCID: PMC9172271.

AMSF Fellowship Winners

All May See Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides fundraising support for UCSF Ophthalmology and Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology.

2018	Alfred Yu (Ou lab)

2019	Joo Yeun Lee (Dunn Lab)
	PROJECT: "Changes in inhibitory retinal circuits following partial cone loss"
2020	Li Xuan Tan (Lakkaraju lab)
	PROJECT: "Mechanisms of retinal degeneration in Alzheimer’s disease-related dementias"
2020	Yao Lu (Kim lab)
	PROJECT: "Enabling direct correlation of choroidal blood flow and retinal degeneration at the single vessel level and over time using transscleral multiphoton microscopy"
2021	Andrea Cozzitorto (Gould lab)
	PROJECT: "Characterization of the molecular and cellular processes involved in ocular anterior segment dysgenesis"
2022	Sangeetha Kandoi (Lamba lab)
	PROJECT: "Retinal organoid-based modeling and gene editing for GUCY2D-associated Cone Rod dystrophy"