Celebrating 49 Years of Preserving, Protecting & Restoring Sight

Nearly five decades of groundbreaking eye care came into focus Saturday, June 14, 2025, as the USC Roski Eye Institute marked its 49th year of ophthalmic excellence. Held at the Aresty Conference Center on the USC Health Sciences Campus, Roski’s annual symposium connected faculty, alumni and guests through presentations on newly approved treatments and emerging therapeutic approaches.

“The Annual Symposium gives our faculty, many of whom are key opinion leaders, an opportunity to showcase their ground breaking work.”

During the symposium, the USC Roski Eye Institute presented three awards:

• Hiroshi Goto, MD, PhD received the 2025 Narsing A. Rao MD Endowed Lecture Award for his groundbreaking basic and clinical research in pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease, sympathetic ophthalmia and viral uveitis, and ocular tumors.
• Daniel F. Martin, MD, received the 2025 Laureate Award for his life-long commitment to preserving and saving sight through managing retinal diseases and conducting numerous clinical trials. The award represents the highest honor bestowed on an individual in recognition of their academic achievements in the preservation, protection, and restoration of vision.
• David A. DiLoreto, Jr., MD, PhD, received the 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of his dedicated service and commitment to excellent in resident and fellow education.

Highlighted topics featured at the symposium included: Artificial Intelligence and Glaucoma Detection; Saliency Analysis of Eye Tracking Using Generative AI to Assess Cortical Visual Impairment Severity; What We’ve Learned About Uveitis from Big Data; Telehealth and Pediatric Eyecare; Gene Therapy for Retinal Degenerations; Endpoints for Geographic Atrophy; Bringing Aqueous Tumor Markers to Clinical Care; Artificial Retinal Implants for Vision Restoration; Whole Eye Transplantation; and Optic Nerve Regeneration.

This year’s speakers included guest faculty including: David Boyer, MD, and Jiun Do, MD, PhD. USC Roski Eye Institute and CHLA faculty who presented included Hossein Ameri, MD, PhD; Jesse Berry, MD; Melinda Chang, MD, PhD; Kimberly Gokoffski, MD, PhD; Mark Humayun, MD, PhD; Thomas C. Lee, MD; Brian Toy, MD; Benjamin Xu, MD, PhD.