UB medical school professor receives top ophthalmology honor

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Steven J. Fliesler, PhD, Meyer H. Riwchun Endowed Chair Professor of Ophthalmology in the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, has been honored by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) as a 2014 ARVO Gold Fellow.

He will be formally inducted during the 2014 ARVO Annual Meeting in May in Orlando.

The association’s gold-tier honorees represent the top 1 percent of its nearly 13,000 members from more than 80 countries, placing him in an elite group of international vision researchers.

A UB faculty member since 2008, Fliesler is an internationally recognized scientist and current president of the International Society for Eye Research. He is vice chair and director of research for UB’s Department of Ophthalmology. He also directs research for UB’s Ira G. Ross Eye Institute Vision Research Center, housed in the Veterans Administration Western New York Healthcare System, where Fliesler also is a research health scientist.

A prolific researcher, Fliesler has been studying cholesterol metabolism in the retina for more than 30 years. For the past two decades, the National Institutes of Health has funded his pioneering studies into retinal dysfunction and degeneration associated with Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome, a rare, sometimes deadly, birth defect.

A member of ARVO for 40 years, Fliesler now chairs its Retinal Cell Biology Section and Publications Committee.

Fliesler lives in Elmwood Village in Buffalo.