The Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience
The next Evenings at Whitney Lecture Series hosted by the University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience will be November 14, 2019, at 7 p.m. with the program titled “Gene Therapy of Retinal Degeneration: What We Can Learn by Listening to the Biology of the Eye”. W. Clay Smith, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the University of Florida, Department of Ophthalmology, will discuss visual complications and treatments for blinding diseases. This free lecture will be presented at the UF Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium, 9505 Ocean Shore Boulevard, in St. Augustine.
Eyes are exquisitely sensitive detectors, capable of registering a single particle of light. Investigations into this sensitivity has identified important parts and pathways of the eye and defects that often lead to visual complications, such as retinal degeneration. Dr. Smith’s talk will focus on how basic science investigations of important properties of the eye are leading to gene therapy treatments for blinding diseases.
Dr. Smith received his BS and MS in entomology from the University of Florida. He then went to graduate school at Yale University, earning his PhD in neurobiology. After a post-doctoral fellowship, he moved to the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience for a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Barbara Battelle where he studied the molecular biology of the horseshoe crab eye. He then joined the University of Florida’s Department of Ophthalmology. He currently serves as the Director of Research for the Department of Ophthalmology, the Director of the Ocular Gene Therapy Core and as co-Director of the Center for Vision Research.