When Wilmer’s Meraf Wolle, M.D., M.P.H., was a first-year medical student at Johns Hopkins, she knew she wanted to explore research while combining her clinical interests in ophthalmology and infectious diseases, so she began to seek out a mentor.

That search brought her to Sheila West, Ph.D., Pharm.D., Wilmer’s Akef El-Maghraby Professor of Preventive Ophthalmology and one of the world’s foremost authorities on trachoma, a devastating infectious disease that affects the world’s most vulnerable populations and leads to irreversible blindness.

“I asked around, and people said Sheila was the best mentor they had worked with as medical students,” Wolle recalls of her mentor, who would eventually become vice chair for research at Wilmer.

An in-person meeting with West followed, and Wolle soon found herself working on not one but two of West’s trachoma studies. West warned it would be a lot of work but told Wolle that if she could complete both in one summer, she would support her in writing her results for publication.

It was a gesture not every academic mentor would extend to a young colleague, and it would prove career- altering for Wolle. As promised, the collaboration resulted in two peer- reviewed papers — one published in Ophthalmology, the other in Investigative Ophthalmology & Vision Science — both had Wolle as first author.

“I was just starting my medical career as a first-year medical student,” says Wolle, today an assistant professor at Wilmer. “I don’t know any other mentor who would spend so much time with young mentees. She really fights for you.”

Wolle’s story is only one of many examples of West’s notable reputation for guiding young researchers. Insightful, wise, rigorous but patient and, above all, quick to dispense credit, West — now vice chair emeritus for research at Wilmer— has helped set the course of dozens of researchers who have gone on to distinguished clinical and research careers.

While West has stepped down as vice chair, she is by no means retiring. She will continue mentoring at Wilmer, she says, because it is a vital part of who she is. “It’s rewarding. I learn as much from them as they do from me. I think of it as sharing my experience with the future,” West says.

Wilmer’s Bonnielin Swenor, Ph.D., M.P.H., has felt the West influence. Back in 2007, when she was an M.P.H. student in one of West’s epidemiology courses, Swenor was taken by West’s first lecture and reached out. In their initial meeting, Swenor did something she didn’t often do: She revealed her own vision impairment to West.

West convinced Swenor to change her research focus from nutrition and cancer to low vision and aging, and helped her choose a research topic. That study yielded an all-important manuscript that got Swenor’s career off the ground.

“Some mentors advocate for you, some help you network, some do both. But only a very few become your career champion,” Swenor says.

Biostatistician Xiangrong Kong, Ph.D., credits West with teaching her the nuances of data collection and rigorous analysis to understand disease. “She has great insight and is always encouraging you to pursue the science,” Kong says. “That kind of role model is very important to a young researcher.”

Pradeep Ramulu, M.D., Ph.D., the chief of Wilmer’s Glaucoma Division, is not only a mentee of West: In April 2019, Ramulu became the Sheila K. West Professor of Ophthalmology, an endowed professorship established at Wilmer as an acknowledgement of West’s profound and lasting influence.

West has been feted with numerous awards and accolades in her life — most recently, the Mildred Weisenfeld Award from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology and the

2018 Al-Sumait Prize for Health — but none of it, she says, prepared her for the joy of the endowed professorship.

Learning of it caught West off guard. When Wilmer Director Peter J. McDonnell, M.D., set a meeting to share the news, West assumed the subject was going to be administrative in nature. “I thought we were going to talk office space,” she says. “When he told me about the endowed chair, it was a complete and wonderful surprise.” She says it was all she could do to hold back tears.

For Ramulu, the professorship holds great meaning and no small degree of challenge in living up to the legacy set for him by his mentor.

“It’s a humbling connection, especially special because of the instrumental role Dr. West played in my career,” Ramulu says. “Sheila’s a great researcher but an even greater person. You can’t ask for anything more than that in a mentor.”