Ophthalmic Research

Ophthalmic research at the University of Cincinnati includes both basic science research and clinical studies. The basic science research program consists of two divisions, a University Division and a Children's Hospital Division. The laboratory of the University Division is located in the Edith J. Crawley Vision Science Research Laboratory on the fifth floor of the CARE/Crawley Building. This division is directed by Winston W.-Y. Kao, Ph.D. Dr. Kao and his coworkers have several concurrent National Eye Institute grants for research into normal and abnormal corneal development and wound healing. They have developed and characterized mouse models of several clinical diseases and utilize these models extensively in their research. The laboratory of the Children's Hospital Division is located near the Health Professions Building in the Children's Hospital Research Foundation Building. This division is headed by Richard A. Lang, Ph.D., an internationally known researcher into normal and abnormal anterior segment development and the impact of various gene defects on that development. Dr. Lang's work is also supported by several concurrent grants from the National Eye Institute.

Clinical research is performed by most of the full-time clinical faculty members and some of the part-time and volunteer clinical faculty members. Ongoing departmental clinical studies include an investigation of treatment options for congenital aniridia, a study of the effectiveness and complications of implanted iris prosthetic devices for congenital and post-traumatic iris defects, an evaluation of limbal conjunctival and placental blood stem cell transplantation in eyes with corneal epithelial deficiency or dysfunction, a study of fine-needle aspiration biopsy of intraocular tumors, an investigation of macular edema using optical coherence tomography, multiple clinico-pathologic correlation studies, and multiple descriptive case series reports.

Research Faculty

Full-Time Research Faculty

Zubair Ahmed, Ph.D., Children's Hospital Division

Nadean Brown, Ph.D., Children's Hospital Division

Tiffany Cook, Ph.D., Children's Hospital Division

Fumika Hamada, Ph.D., Children's Hospital Division


Winston W.-Y. Kao, Ph.D., Director, University Division
Richard A. Lang, Ph.D., Director, Children's Hospital Division
Chia-Yang Liu, Ph.D., University Division

Minh-Than Nguyen, Ph.D., University Division

Post-Doctoral Fellows/Research Scientists/Graduate Students

Mindy Call, Ph.D.

Hongshan Liu, M.D., Ph.D.

Yujin Zhang, Ph.D.