Research Opportunities in Ophthalmology

Summer Research Scholars Program

The Wilmer Eye Institute invites students to apply for a summer research elective between the first and second year of medical school.

Learn more about the Summer Research Scholars Program

Current Faculty Research Project Opportunities

Wilmer Faculty	Current Opportunities	Research Interests	Required Skills
Bonnielin Swenor	Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency Capstone project for an MPH student	Low vision and aging disability inclusion health care outcomes	Understanding of statistics, hard working, collaborative, prior clinical research experience is a plus
Xiangrong Kong	1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency Capstone project for an MPH student	retinal degenerations clinical research	Data management
Tom Johnson	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency	Basic and translational neuroscience retina and optic nerve stem cell biology	None needed, but previous experience in basic science techniques helpful
Nakul Shekhawat	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency Capstone project for an MPH student	Corneal blindness (microbial keratitis) Cataract surgery Tele-ophthalmology and artificial intelligence Global ophthalmology	None needed. Students can assist with manuscript writing, clinical record review, data collection, and data entry/cleanup.
Divya Srikumaran	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency Capstone project for an MPH student	corneal transplants resident education (clinical research)	completion of IRB training and some experience with EPIC and or stats preferred but not required
Andrew Carey	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV)	Neuro-ophthalmology clinical research, mostly retrospective review	Chart review, data entry
Jithin Yohannan	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency Capstone project for an MPH student	Glaucoma Testing Machine Learning Big Data	Data Collection/Cleanup, Writing, Data Analysis (not required)
Fasika Woreta	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency Capstone project for an MPH student	ocular trauma medical education high-value care and quality improvement	None needed
Akrit Sodhi	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency	Ocular vascular disease basic science clinical/translational research	basic science research experience OR statistics
Jefferson Doyle	1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency Extended duration project (1+yrs) on a part-time basis	Genetic eye diseases - patient clinic studies or preclinical therapy trials in mouse models	None required
Uri Soiberman	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency	Keratoconus clinical and basic science	None required, although prior experience preferred
Pradeep Ramulu	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency Capstone project for an MPH student	Impact of visual impairment on the individual and how it manifests in their daily life Patient-centered research projects in glaucoma.	Ability to work in a team and interact with patients. Analytical and writing skills
Mona Kaleem	Ongoing project. Appropriate for any level.	Development of educational material: Help editing an educational podcast and audio book and posting them to our website.	Interest in learning how to do sound editing. Ability to work with a podcast hosting system to upload audio files
Shameema Sikder	Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency	AI and cataract surgery education	Computer science background helpful
Mandeep Singh	1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency	Inherited retinal diseases and stem cells: Clinical research: Inherited retinal diseases, genotype-phenotype correlations, database of >500 genotyped/ phenotyped cases; Artificial intelligence - automated diagnosis/staging of rare retinopathies Translational research - retinal stem cell transplantation in animal models	Excel/ basic biostatistics
Mira M Sachdeva	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency	Diabetic retinopathy macular degeneration retinal vascular disease surgical/treatment outcomes	For clinical projects, organization and database management experience helpful but not required; For basic science projects, some lab experience helpful but not required.
Fatemeh Rajaii	Summer Scholarly Concentration Project (MS1) 1-2 month research electives (MS II-MS IV) Year long research for students taking year off before applying to residency	clinical projects looking at outcomes of periocular and orbital disease basic science projects looking at both uveal melanoma biology and orbital adipogenesis