XClose

UCL News

Menu

New chair at UCL strengthens fight for sight

23 January 2008

Links:

Professor Matteo Carandini ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/profile?upi=MCARA89" target="_self">Professor Matteo Carandini
  • UCL Institute of Ophthalmology

    • Professor Matteo Carandini has joined the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology as the new GlaxoSmithKline/Fight for Sight Chair of Visual Neuroscience.

    Professor Carandini's research focuses on the computations performed by the retina, the visual thalamus and the primary visual areas of the cerebral cortex, with a view to understanding how the responses of neurones depend on visual stimuli and on one another's activity. By revealing how visual neurones respond during natural vision in healthy subjects, Professor Carandini's research investigates how these neurones should be stimulated during artificial vision in impaired subjects. This knowledge is essential to his aim of designing visual prostheses to benefit patients with a wide variety of disorders for which there is currently little or no treatment available.

    Professor Carandini joins UCL from the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, where he spent five years investigating the visual responses of thalamic neurones and developing advanced imaging techniques that reveal the activity of neuronal populations.  Prior to this he was based in Zurich at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. In addition, Professor Carandini is the recipient of a Strategic Award from the Medical Research Council.

    Professor Carandini said: "It is an honour to join the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and I look forward to continuing my research and contributing to the exciting translational research being undertaken at the institute".

    Professor Phil Luthert, Director of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, said: "Professor Carandini's work is central to the work of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and its mission to improve the sight of as wide a range of visually impaired patients as possible. We are delighted that he has chosen to join us".

    The new position is funded by Fight for Sight, a UK charity dedicated to funding world-class research into the prevention and treatment of blindness and eye disease, and was originally received from GlaxoSmithKline in 1990. 

    To find out more about the work of Professor Carandini and the institute, follow the links at the top of this notice.