Cornea Fellowship

The Cornea Service of the University of Illinois offers a one-year fellowship in cornea and external ocular disease and refractive surgery. There are two concurrent fellows.

CLAES DOHLMAN AWARD (application for this award is encouraged)
Letter
Application.doc (Microsoft Word file)
Application.pdf (Adobe Acrobat file)

Requirements and Responsibilities

The fellows serve as junior faculty members and are responsible for running the Cornea Clinic as well as seeing and examining patients in the Cornea suite under the supervision of the Cornea faculty. The fellows also run a cornea clinic at the West Side Veterans Administration Hospital one morning every other week and take trauma calls as a faculty member in rotation with the fellows from the other clinical services. The fellows also spend time on the Refractive Service at the Millennium Park Eye Center on Michigan Avenue .

Clinical investigations are carried out by the Cornea Faculty as well as full-time doctoral level research faculty. The fellow has an opportunity to participate in these investigative pursuits and is expected to give at least one presentation at the end of the year.

The facilities at the University of Illinois at Chicago, including the Eye and Ear Infirmary, the Lions of Illinois Eye Research Institute, and University of Illinois Hospital as well as the West Side Veterans Hospital and Millennium Park, are available for the fellowship program.

Surgical opportunities are derived from the patients seen in the clinic as well as the West Side Veterans Hospital. Typically the fellows do 30 - 50 penetrating and lamellar keratoplasties, 20 - 30 cataract extractions and 6-8 LASIK procedures during the fellowship year. Additional surgical experiences are gained with ocular surface surgeries and trauma surgeries.

Educational opportunities in addition to those gained directly with the Cornea Service include participation in Grand Rounds and Cornea Teaching Rounds weekly, and lectures which are available for the residents on weekday mornings as well as Saturday mornings.

Faculty

Elmer Tu, MD—Director, Cornea Service
Dimitri Azar, MD—Department Head & Director, Refractive Surgery Section
Joel Sugar, MD
Ali Djalilian, MD
Sandeep Jain, MD
Jose de la Cruz, MD