Graduate Student Programs

The Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences offers research experience in a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines to undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students from a number of the basic science departments throughout UIC. Currently, graduate students and PhD candidates from the departments of Biological Sciences, Psychology, Microbiology and Immunology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the College of Medicine's MD/PhD Program are conducting basic vision-related research in the Department's various research laboratories.

Why study at UIC?

"The Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary is unique in the way learning and research is organized. From bottom to top, it is like one big family where faculty, staff and students closely interact with each other in education and leisure—most importantly, patients are part of this family. And of course the buildings housing the center are strategically located."

—Christian Clement, Graduate Student in Microbiology

Department MD/PhD returns from medical mission to Philippines

David J. Ramsey, an MD/PhD student and member of Dr. Haohua Qian 's neuroscience research group, joined a medical mission to the province of Nueva Vizcaya in the Philippines. Nueva Vizcaya is a largely rural province six hours north of Manila on the island of Luzon.

The one-week mission, sponsored by the Global Medical Foundation, was conducted the week of March 1. It was the sixth medical mission conducted by the foundation to this part of the Philippines, thanks to the support of province Governor Rodolfo Q. Agbayani. Mr. Ramsey went on the trip with his UIC Family Medicine LPC Preceptor, Dr. Christopher Guerrero, a founding member of the foundation.

The mission group worked with the native population at several outreach centers high in the mountains that surround the fertile valleys in this part of the Philippines. In cooperation with the local public health service, they served an estimated 1,500 patients in all, providing physician services and medication to nearly 800 people.

“I saw over a hundred patients, including many with eye complaints,” said Mr. Ramsey. “We even saw patients in our hotel rooms at night.”

The mission also included a surgical component that treated thyroid disease (goiter), cleft pallets, and prostate problems.

Mr. Ramsey gave a lecture at St. Mary's University to the students in the college of nursing on "Preventing the Complications of Diabetes" with a special focus on diabetic eye disease and his work with Dr. Qian on GABA signaling pathway in the diabetic eye.